Drunk Mummy

Bloggering Off - For Good

2007-09-03T17:03:00.000+01:00

The jockeying for position has started. Several parents have already been straining at the leash, eager to drop impressive nuggets of one-upmanship into the school gate conversation:
‘Ptolemy has been doing Kumon Astrophysics over the summer – he just LOVES it!’
Or:
‘Cressida was so impressed after our visit to the Coliseum that she’s been teaching herself Latin for the last three weeks!’
My daughter has not mastered a second language this summer (unless you count the lyrics to High School Musical) and the boys appear to have forgotten how to write their own names.
Instead, they have all channelled their energies into growing about three inches taller and two shoe sizes bigger, so that not a single item of last year’s school uniform fits any more. Damn inconsiderate, if you ask me. I had rather hoped that their extensive sofa-bound, screen-based activities might have stunted their growth, but not at all. Instead, there was a definite hint of claustrophobia this morning as they wrestled their free-range feet into battery-farm school socks. When I tried to help them, I felt like a Chinese foot binder.
Now that they are back at school, I have been faced with some tough decisions.
Blogging for the last six months has been more fun than I could ever have imagined. However the pressure of my copious wine consumption on the family finances means that I need to either give up drinking wine (What? And lose the will to live?) or earn some money to support my habit. In addition, my nine year old daughter has discovered my ‘alter ego’, so my cover of anonymity looks like being well and truly blown.
I have therefore decided to suspend the blog. Note that I can’t quite bring myself to say ‘stop blogging’ since the prospect of blog withdrawal symptoms is too hideous to contemplate.
Without the blog, I may be forced once again to converse politely on topics as unedifying as Gordon Brown’s sense of humour, or David Cameron’s hairstyle, instead of immersing myself in the glorious cyber-circus of other people’s blog pages.
Without the blog, I may have to start taking notice of my children, whose gradual slide from ‘benign’ to ‘wilful’ neglect hasn’t even been spotted by the social workers.
Without the blog, I shall miss the kind, supportive and desperately funny comments of all those people who took the time to read the posts and leave a reply.
Rather than stumble around the blogosphere, saying goodbye and flinging my arms around necks, whilst slurring ‘I love you, mate, I REALLY love you’ I will try and maintain a bit of decorum by simply raising a glass of La Marca prosecco, and wishing all my blogging buddies the very best for the future…..
….although, decorum has never been my strong point, and come to think of it, I do feel a song coming on. I might just grab the bottle (for a microphone), open the fridge door (for a spotlight) and in my very best pub-singer voice, belt out (in the style of Frank Sinatra rather than Sid Vicious):

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain……

Come on, folks, join in with the chorus!

Bloggering Off

2007-08-17T16:00:00.000+01:00

I’m swanning off to South Wales for two weeks. ‘Swanning’ being the appropriate word, since I am trying to maintain a cool, calm and collected appearance on the surface (see my graceful, slender neck gulping back this glass of sparkling wine), but underneath I am working frantically to get everything packed and ready (see my big broad feet thrashing around among the boxes in the loft).
This time we’re off for a week camping on the coast with one of my brothers and his family, followed by a week staying at my mother-in-law’s house. There’s lovely!
The camping should be interesting, since my brother’s family are seasoned caravanners, but have never taken the canvas plunge. I have told them that camping is ‘the holiday the weather can’t spoil’ but for some reason, they don’t believe me. I just don’t think they realise how little there is to spoil.
My emergency camping supplies are two wine boxes, both Hardy’s and both £17.99 from Tesco. One is Cabernet Sauvignon and the other Chardonnay. I haven’t tried either of them before, but since both grape types are generally good ‘crowd pleasers’ I reckon they will be just what we need. If not, I am prepared to slug the lot back on my own.
It is Friday though, so no matter how busy I am, there is always time to pause for the Friday Night Fizz. This week it is a bottle of Angas Brut (Oddbins £7.49) an Australian sparkling wine which has a delightfully smooth and creamy taste that somehow reminds me of strawberries. This is excellent value if you like fruity fizz, and I intend to stock up on several more bottles for the Drunk Mummy Wine Vaults.
In my absence, I thought you might like to read an article I wrote for the July edition of Dulwich Life & Style magazine. I don’t live in Dulwich. I doubt I would be allowed to, since I don't own a single pair of white jeans (unlike Dulwich Mum who was up to double figures at the last count). The article looks a bit outdated now, since it was published at the end of the school summer term, but never mind. Here goes:

A Question of Sports Day

It’s the end of the Summer Term - the time of year when many schools realise that parents can’t possibly have any annual leave left, so they organise a Sports Day.
At my children’s school, which terrorises parents on a regular basis, some bright spark decided it might be ‘fun’ to have some races for parents during this year’s Sports Day.
I have always felt that I embarrass my children enough in public without having to make a special effort, but my daughter had other ideas. She pointed out that I am always urging her to ‘join in’ so she wanted to know why I wasn’t entering the Mothers’ Race. My defence (that I was wearing a push-up bra) was scornfully dismissed, and within minutes I was lining up with assorted long-limbed and athletic mums. There were a few nervous jokes, and the occasional high pitched laugh, but there was no disguising the air of steely resolve.
Now, the race itself seemed to happen in slow-motion, but that could just have been the actual speed I was running. Still, in my mind, I was a streamlined gazelle, bounding gracefully over the grassy plain. The video footage taken by a sadistic parent revealed a much harsher reality. I had been right to worry about the push-up bra.
The Fathers’ Race which followed, proved to be a triumph of ambition over common sense, and no doubt, resulted in months of brisk business for the local physios and chiropracters. The testosterone-fuelled dad who won looked delighted with his victory, and when he faced the cheering crowd, his moment of glory was only slightly tarnished as he realised that he had run the whole race with his flies undone.
Of course, there were other competitive events at Sports Day. The Picnic Display was hotly contested, as parents vied to provide the most nutritionally smug lunch. At one point, a wholesome mother offered me a piece of home-made cake which consisted entirely of chickpeas, yogurt and toddler spit.
Over at the stall selling ploughman’s lunches, there was some Long Distance Queuing. Unfortunately, the line of shuffling participants was forced to witness the disturbing sight of a mother trying to cut a large wheel of extremely ripe Brie into sixty four equal portions. There was some concern about what was likely to crack first – her perky smile or her sanity.
Finally, there was the Pimm’s Bar Relay (a personal favourite), where contestants had to get the next full glass lined up and ready just before they finished downing the last one. In my opinion, Pimm’s should be classed as a health drink, by virtue of its five portions of fruit and vegetables in every glass. It is also a much livelier alternative to a ploughman’s lunch or a picnic.
I seem to remember at some point during the Sports Day, there was a rumour that the children might be running a few races, or something. But like most of the parents there, I was way too busy to watch any of that.

I am off to enjoy the last two weeks of this glorious English summer (cue hollow laugh). I will be back in September.
Cheers!

Back On The Chain Gang

2007-08-15T20:00:00.000+01:00

I never thought I would say this, but I had forgotten how much relentless hard graft is involved in raising babies and small children.
When I had three children under two-and-a-half, I lost count of the times some bright-eyed, well-groomed mum with self-sustaining older children would tell me to ‘enjoy’ these early years, since they were over so quickly.
Invariably, I would force a crazed smile and think ‘How can you say that? This feels like a life-sentence of hard labour.’ I even had the clothes, hair and make-up appropriate for the whole chain-gang existence. I could just about cope, but someone telling me that I should be enjoying it all, just made me feel worse. Like many parents, I had to suspend belief in everything that was rational and self-evident, and give myself up to the blind faith that things would somehow turn out alright, alternating with periods of self-flagellation when they didn’t.
Who needs religion when you can have parenthood?
Fast-forward six years, and although I still have the mental scars from those early years, the loosening of the shackles has been so gradual, that I never realised quite how much freedom H and I have gained. That is, until the travelling circus of my brother and his young family came to town.
Of course, the baby was adorable, and the two year old twins were a delight, but there really wasn’t one minute of the visit when we weren’t ‘doing something’ for one of them. Between the wiping, rattling, rocking, soothing, helping them dress, not helping them dress, and negotiating over which plate to use, there was hardly time to have a decent glass of wine or three. Luckily the weather was good, so we managed to keep all six children entertained with trips to the playground, and copious use of a paddling pool in the garden.
Now that they have gone home, the lawn looks like the final days of Glastonbury, and the house is spookily quiet. Games which involved shrieking and chasing ‘monsters’ up and down the stairs have been replaced once again by games which involve lying silently on the sofa and chasing monsters across a screen. Bathtime has reverted from an hour long water-based theme park back to something more closely resembling a sheep dip. And once again, I no longer have to wipe anyone else’s bottom but my own.
I am sitting here with a glass of soft, smooth, black-cherry tasting Stoneleigh Marlborough Pinot Noir (Ocado £8.49) and thinking with utter relief how far we have all moved on. The only down side I can see is that a single Smartie is no longer considered a suitable reward for good behaviour.
Even the kids, who loved playing with their little cousins, have gone strangely quiet on the subject of wanting me to have another baby. Maybe now that they too have realised what incredibly hard work babies and small children can be, they will finally stop bullying me and my shrivelled ovaries.

Bloginterviewer Interview Her Blog

2007-08-13T20:04:00.000+01:00

We are all still submerged in the mire of velvet-skinned babies and argumentative toddlers, while my brother and his family are visiting, but I thought I would just quickly publicise an interview I was asked to do for Bloginterviewer.com.
I think this site is a great idea and like all great ideas, you wonder why someone hasn’t thought of it before. I was tremendously flattered to be asked, since I have never been ‘interviewed’ before. What amazed and amused me was the difficulty I had in answering the simple question: ‘What is your blog about?’
One of the requests from the site is that contributors are asked to link the website on their side bar, and get their readers to vote for their blog. Although I am more than happy to publicise the website, I am not overly concerned about the voting. Indulging in the fantasy of being interviewed was reward enough (I just imagined the dulcet tones of Jenni Murray asking the questions). As a result, any delusions of grandeur have now escalated, and I have spent an indecent amount of time crafting whole interviews inside my head. However, as a forty-something mum, I realise that confessing to fantasies that involve Richard Madeley is seriously sad.

We'll Take Manhattan

2007-08-09T16:02:00.000+01:00

Our visit to Manhattan was a combination of slick, high-speed living and slow, patient queuing. We had a great trip to the Statue of Liberty and took all the requisite photos of ourselves grinning like chimps, with the ethereal green statue in the background. The Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island was fantastic, and seemed to offer an insight into what ‘being American’ means for millions of people. We also managed an early morning trip up to the top of the Empire State Building. At the time it seemed that the visibility was rather poor, but that could just have been my hangover - a result of over-indulgence in the delicious Californian ‘Toasted Head’ Cabernet Sauvignon. It certainly felt like my head had been toasted.
We also managed rides on the subway and in yellow taxis, went to the Central Park zoo, and popped our heads in at Tiffany’s. We ate fantastic Chinese food downstairs at Wo Hop, superb pizza at Arturo's and drank root beer with our burgers in the Big Daddy Diner. Add to that the bagels, pretzels and ice cream we consumed, and we can safely say that we took the most almighty bite out of the Big Apple.
In a slightly surreal moment, we passed the apartment block where I spent a very happy, party-fuelled year, in the days when I was single, solvent and sexy (yes, it was a long time ago). I explained this to the kids, who nodded vacantly, just to humour me. The only interest shown was by the youngest who asked if he had been around then. No, I explained, Mummy didn’t have children then. Ah, but was he in my tummy? No, not even there. Ah, but wasn’t he inside me, even as a tiny, tiny egg? Okay, yes, on that basis, I suppose so.
My God, how depressing. There I had been, thinking I was living a fantastic, carefree life as a sassy single girl, but all the time I had really been a mother of three children. It’s amazing how children can not only colonise your body and your every waking thought, but they can re-write your personal history too.
I am posting early today, as my brother and his family are coming to stay with us for a while, and I can’t blog again until they leave next week. He and his wife have two-year-old twins, and an eight month old baby, so H and I are going to try and give them both a bit of a break. Our reward will be to punch the air every time they are out of the room and shout ‘Thank God that’s not us any more!’
We have been trying to remove as many ‘swallowable’ items as possible from the living room, but just clearing the Lego pieces and the Polly Pocket bits has taken us hours. I remember my youngest child swallowing a metal ball-bearing from a Magnetix set when he was two. I never knew if it ever came out of him, but I was tempted to make the other two children swallow a magnetic bar each from the same set, so at least I could click them all together when we needed to cross the road.
I am planning for tonight’s meal to include several bottles of Yalumba Shiraz-Viognier (Ocado £5.49 down from £6.99 until 11/09). This hearty, full-bodied red is bound to be a big hit with my hearty, full-bodied brother. It tastes of licquorish and plums and is lovely and smooth.
I am also going to need several bottles for tomorrow’s Friday Night Fizz, so it can really only be the great La Marca prosecco (Ocado £5.99). Its light, fragrant sparkle will match my light, fragrant sister-in-law, as she settles down to get hog-whimperingly drunk with me.

More Red Carpet

2007-08-09T14:51:00.000+01:00

I have (quite rightly) had my knuckles rapped over the use of the term ‘laundry’ for ‘washing’.
However, in the same way that the Inuits are supposed to have at least twenty words for ‘snow’ given the ubiquity of the stuff in their lives, then I suppose it is appropriate to have more than one word to describe the festering piles of ordinary dirty clothes, specialist wash dirty clothes, clean but damp clothes, and dry but unironed clothes.
I think that using the term ‘washing’ is like being sold short in terms of job description, whereas ‘laundry’ better illustrates the three-headed beast that is washing, drying and ironing – and I want full recognition for doing all three, dammit!
However, my reluctant Cinderella status has been brightened by the appearance of this little gem:

My Fairy Godmother in this instance is Crazy Trace, the all-action, tandem-toting Aussie mum. Thank you Tracy, I shall go to the ball! I don’t suppose you could wave your wand at the remaining bits of ironing, and turn them into a fabulous sparkly dress could you?
I would like to pass the award on to Reluctant Memsahib who writes with great warmth and humour about bringing up a family in Africa. When I am huffing about one of my favourite wines being ‘temporarily out of stock’ at the supermarket, her blog is a delightful reality check.

Enjoy the award Memsahib – you are an inspiration!

Noo Joysey

2007-08-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

Back from the Good Ol’ US of A, after a fabulous holiday of sun, sand, sea and sauvignon.

Saving me from the inevitable ‘post vacational tristesse’ and among the barrage of grim or threatening correspondence, were a couple of cyber-gongs!
So, before I do anything else, I need to thank Akelamalu for this:

Mother at Large for this:

And The Good Woman for this:
Almost as important as the shiny badges (but not quite – I can be very shallow) were the kind words they used when ‘presenting’ the awards. Thank you all very much – I have already been toasting your future health and happiness! I know I am supposed to pass two of them on, but having been away for so long, I feel I have rather missed the boat – and everyone I would have suggested appears to have been nominated already!

Anyway, our family holiday was a fantastic trip. The flights were painless, courtesy of the in-flight films and interactive games. In fact, the boys spent the entire flight immobile apart from their thumbs. I have no idea if deep vein thrombosis is a risk for the under eights, but I did check them for bed sores.
We spent the first week in Bay Head, New Jersey, which must be one of the prettiest, most manicured towns I have ever visited. I don’t think there has been any crime there since an ugly incident two years ago when a feckless resident allowed his front lawn to become slightly overgrown. He was fined and probably had his membership of the Yacht Club revoked. I believe the public shame and humiliation forced him to sell up and move to a neighbourhood more suited to his slovenly habits.
Even the beach in Bay Head is sparkling clean and litter-free, since you aren’t allowed to eat anything while you are on it, and you can only take water to drink (which seems rather uncivilised). No-one locks the doors of their house or their car, because the town groans under the weight of so many ‘enforcement’ squads – law, traffic, beach. I knew without asking that topless sunbathing would be forbidden. There’s probably a ‘boob enforcement’ squad somewhere, ready to pounce on unsuspecting European sunbathers and cover them up with bandeau bikini tops.
Even if you told your whinging children to ‘run along and play in the traffic’ they would be safe in Bay Head, because all the traffic yields to pedestrians. There is even one road down which the residents avoid driving, because the local kiddies like to roller-blade and ride their bikes and skateboards on it. My children already suffer from the delusion that the world revolves around them. Staying in Bay Head just confirmed their belief.
Such a squeaky-clean place would have had me snorting with derision when I was in my twenties. Since the town doesn’t even have a bar, I would have seen no reason to stay longer than to sneer a few well-chosen insults about a ‘police-state’ before retreating to the nearest den of iniquity. But as an aging mother of three, I loved it and didn’t want to leave. Ever. It was like living in a Doris Day film, but cleaner and more wholesome.
H and I spent the week eating the local specialities - lobster, clams, oysters. Attempts to get the kids to sample these delicacies ended in the usual theatrical face-pulling from them, and mutterings about ‘casting pearls before swine’ from me. They preferred to gorge on those other local specialities - hot dogs and burgers. Even then, faced with the cornucopia of options (Tomato? Onion? Dill pickle? American cheese? Cheddar cheese? Swiss cheese? Lettuce? Ranch dressing? Blue cheese dressing?) they still opted for ‘just ketchup please.’ My irritation with them was soothed only after several glasses of a delicious Napa Valley Miller Ranch Sauvignon Blanc.
We drank some fabulous wines during the holiday, but they were nearly all from California (with the notable exception of a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir from Oregon). My ‘Friday Night Fizz’ was a bottle of Korbel Brut Champagne - a light and crisp Californian sparkling wine which is allowed to call itself ‘champagne’ without invoking litigation from the French producers.
Despite making (fairly illegible) notes of the wines we drank, I have only been able to find a UK supplier for one, so most of them will have to remain a distant but tasty memory. The one I can get here is a Fetzer Valley Oaks Cabernet Sauvignon (Ocado £7.49) which I am drinking right now, and desperately trying to recreate that holiday feeling. Despite its delicious black cherry and spicy taste, it just doesn’t have the same magic as it did when we were away. I suppose it must be similar to the disappointment of a holiday romance, when that waiter who looked like a sleek stallion in Santorini, just looks like a greasy gelding in Gatwick. Another glass, perhaps, and I might be able to rekindle the romance.

We finished the holiday with some time in Manhattan, but I need to sober up a bit and engage in some hand-to-hand combat with the laundry before I get the chance to write about that.

On The Town

2007-07-18T20:53:00.000+01:00

I have been nominated by Mopsa and MYA for a Blogging Community Involvement Award for Services to Schmoozing! I am truly flattered, as I believe that schmoozing is a seriously under-rated skill (along with sponging – but we’ll come to that later). It is supposed to involve the gift of ‘conversing casually in order to make a social connection.’ After a few bevvies, my conversation can become so ‘casual’ that it is positively slurred, but never mind. Thank you Mopsa and MYA, I am delighted to accept, and would like to pass the nomination on to Jenny at Mountain Mama, who has such a warm, conversational style, you feel that you are sitting right next to her, at the kitchen table of her lovely mountain home.
Download the shiny badge, Jenny, and enjoy!

Anyway, enough of the red carpet - we are off on holiday! Some friends in New York have very generously given us the use of their beach house on the Jersey Shore, followed by the use of their Manhattan apartment. What a sponger’s paradise! Even the horror of taking three children on an eight hour flight wasn’t enough to make me pass up this opportunity. Also, as I have mentioned before, I am unfashionably fond of the USA, and can’t wait to get back there again.
The kids are very excited about seeing the Statue of Liberty, and I am very excited about pouring gallons of American wine down my neck. The favourable exchange rate means that I really should sample as much as I can, don’t you think?
While we are away, my brother and his family are coming to stay in our house. This has caused me considerable anxiety. When you take a look at your own house and try and see it through someone else’s eyes, it can be truly alarming. I’m not just talking about the level of squalor we tolerate at home, compared to normal people. It’s more to do with the vagaries of the house and its contents.
It started when we handed the keys over. I had to give my brother and his wife details about how the front door was ‘really easy’ to open, as long as you pull it towards you, before turning the key. Then I moved on to explain how opening the back door was ‘really easy’, as it was the reverse procedure to the front door, but required an additional shoulder barge. ‘Never mind’ they said, ‘we won’t open the back door – how do we open the windows?’ Well, it’s ‘really easy’, there’s a key, but it only works on some of the windows. ‘Never mind’ they said, ‘we won’t open the windows.’ By this point, they were exchanging claustrophobic glances, so I didn’t dare describe how you have to twist the shower control right round to the left if you want any hot water, or stand on one leg to ignite the ring on the gas cooker. It is turning into a nightmare scenario of having to attach explanatory Post-it notes to every idiosyncratic control and appliance we own. I have even bought a new kettle and iron, since the risk of electrocution from our old ones was dangerously high, unless you were wearing Wellington boots.
As I am in holiday mood, I have cracked open a bottle of Ca’Rosa Prosecco (Oddbins £7.49) which is dry, with a light and delicate apple flavour. I don’t like it quite as much as my favourite La Marca (Ocado £5.99), but it is a very strong contender for second place. Highly recommended!
Just one more glass, then I will carry on packing the suitcases. Despite all the preparation, I am really looking forward to this holiday. The chance to spend time together as a family will enable us to discover what it is that we really can’t stand about each other.

I will be back in August – I’m missing you already!

Knee Trembler

2007-07-16T21:03:00.000+01:00

It is amazing how long a weekend can seem when you are free of the shackles of domesticity. Time normally spent making meals, arguing about eating the food, clearing up, and then making the next meal, can be spent on far more agreeable pastimes. H and I were away from the kids for only one day and night, and yet we crammed so much into that short space of time, it felt like we had been away for a week. Even the weather was complicit in this wild fantasy, by staying dry for the walk during the day and turning sunny for the Saturday evening party.
My new walking boots were fantastic – robust, flexible and reliable, which is more than can be said of the person wearing them. My friends and I started our heroic hike with a visit to Chesters at Skelwith Bridge to talk strategy, between mouthfuls of cake. The unanimous decision was to walk up to Stickle Tarn in the Langdale Pikes. This isn’t a difficult walk, but it is steep, and took us over three hours. By the time we got back to the car park, my knees were trembling so much that I could have been a teenager in the side alley of a nightclub.
A hot bath sorted me out, and within a couple of hours I had morphed from hearty hiker to party princess (or merry matron, depending on your perspective).
Any meal which starts with Taittinger on the terrace is going to be good, and the spectacular views over Lake Windermere were an added bonus. There were plenty of tasty little ‘amuse gueules’ which certainly amused this girl. I ate so many of them, there didn’t seem much point in going inside for the main meal. I was only persuaded to do so by the promise of a French white (Lamy St Aubin chardonnay) and a South African red (Meerlust Rubicon). Obviously I felt the need to sample them both, several times over.
Strangely, the more wine my fellow walkers and I drank, the more our ramble to Stickle Tarn took on the dimensions of an epic mountain adventure that would have had Sir Edmund Hillary begging to turn back, claiming lack of experience. By the end of the evening, one of my friends was slurring so much that we felt sure her jaw was displaying the early symptoms of frostbite. The other was having dizzy spells and kept falling over, so she was obviously suffering from altitude sickness.
Back here in the kitchen it already seems like a long time ago. I want to recapture that heady romantic feeling of being on the hotel terrace, without having to shout ‘Come away from the edge!’ to a lively child every five minutes. Perhaps I can re-enact some of the glamour with this chilled La Prendina Estate Pinot Grigio Rosé (M&S £5.59). Its crisp fruity flavour makes me think of strawberries and raspberries, and warm evenings where the glow from the setting sun is reflected on the dappled surface of a lake. Sadly, the only water I can see from my kitchen window is a fetid pool of stagnant rainwater which has collected in the yellow plastic lid of the sandpit. Not quite the effect I was after.
I think I will just sit down at the kitchen table, pour myself another chilled glass, close my eyes and dream. I can already feel a bout of altitude sickness coming on.

Lakeland Larks

2007-07-13T14:45:00.000+01:00

I am posting early today, because we are about to set off up the M6 for a weekend away. On Saturday morning, H and I will palm the kids off on my Dad, and then try not to run as we head off to the glorious Lake District, where our friend’s 50th birthday party is going to be held.
The plan is that two very good female friends and I are going to do a fairly substantial hill walk in the morning and early afternoon, leaving the blokes to ….well, I’m not exactly sure what they are going to do, really. Watch videos or sport or something. Maybe swap knitting patterns, who knows?
I have already done an emergency dash to the shops this morning, to replace the walking boots that I threw out over six months ago, when I discovered that they had gone mouldy. I had actually forgotten that I had thrown them out, but apparently H hasn’t. Well, at least he claims to remember my bitter outburst about the symbolism of it all.
Thankfully, walking boots are designed for wide-footed hearty types, rather than pointy-toed pixies, so at least this speed-shopping trip wasn’t as arduous as procuring the turquoise strappy wedges last Saturday. I am now the proud owner of a pair of ultra-lightweight, waterproof state-of-the-art boots. Doubtless they will enable me to leap across mountain crevasses, scramble over scree, and stride purposefully up near-vertical inclines. Well, they looked comfortable enough to stroll through quaint little gift shops looking for Kendal Mint Cake, and that’s what really matters.
After the walk, the three of us intend to return rosy-cheeked and virtuous, ready for a hot bath and the transformation from mountain goats to valley girls.
Now, although I am really excited by the prospect of the walk, the pessimist within fears that after all that fresh air and a scented bath, I may just want to curl up and go to sleep. Walking any distance in new boots means that my feet will be like two bags of chips, and I will have to unplait my toes in order to force them into my strappy wedges.
There will be only one thing for it: pre-dinner drinks to lift my spirits and numb the pain.
I was thinking about pre-dinner drinks last night as I opened up my Friday Night Cheap Fizz (one night early). A glass of champagne in a posh restaurant is probably going to cost about £6. For the same money, I could have a bottle of Cuvée Royale Crémant de Limoux (Ocado £5.59 down from £6.99 until 31/7). I wanted to try the Blanquette de Limoux as suggested by MYA, who calls it ‘a fête in a bottle’ but this was as near as I could get. It has a rich biscuit and apple taste, and is quite dry, making it seem a lot more expensive than it actually is.
I have just checked on the weather forecast for The Lakes, and with comforting familiarity, it promises to be lousy. Therefore, I have packed my waterproofs - and I’m not afraid to use them.

Bags Of Fun

2007-07-11T20:07:00.000+01:00

That’s it – the third child has finally finished school for the summer. At last we can sit around in our pyjamas all day and watch junk television – which is exactly what I used to do myself at a similar age.
I have spent the last week studiously avoiding eye contact with other mothers in order to sidestep plans to meet up for educational days out or healthy picnics. Unfortunately, my daughter has accused me of stunting her social growth by refusing to plunge headlong into the morass of scheduled events and activities. She hasn’t yet discovered the boundless joys of being unsociable, which is surprising when you consider that she lives with such a great role model.
Each of my kids has come home from school on their final day laden down with at least three carrier bags. These have all been dumped unceremoniously in the corner of the kitchen. It looks as if I have had a supermarket home delivery, but instead of the usual bottles of wine and packets of frozen chips, the bulging carrier bags contain every single piece of work they have done across the school year.
What is the point of all this? Do schools think that parents need hard evidence that their children have been doing something other than picking their noses all year? Are they just pandering to the parental obsession of needing to know everything our children are doing, even when they manage to escape the full glare of our interest for a few hours a day at school?
When I was at junior school, the only thing we brought home on the final day of the school year was a pair of cheesy-smelling plimsolls which had been used for ‘music and movement.’ I vaguely remember that we did those lessons in our underwear, which seems astounding now and makes me feel ancient. I suppose it added another weapon to the armoury of the sadistic PE staff, enabling them to humiliate the weedier children even more effectively.
Anyway, the bags are piled up in the corner, and I’m not sure what to do with them. I really can’t face looking through reams of spelling tests and times table worksheets, or making appreciative noises at A3 sized pieces of artwork which drop chunks of bright red powder paint all over my dressing gown. I know for certain that I don’t want to look in the ‘My Busy Bee News’ book, which is well-known for exposing my intemperance, rather like a tabloid newspaper. Now I know what it must feel like to be a D-list celebrity whose agent has advised her against reading the gutter press. After all, there isn’t much point trying to sue an eight year old for libel.
Other parents tell me that they select a couple of pieces of artwork to keep, and a nicely written story or two. But that is going to involve sifting through the entire contents of each bag, not to mention lighting the blue touch paper of sibling rivalry.
Time to pause and enjoy a glass of Wither Hills Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand (Sainsburys £8.99). This grassy, gooseberry–and-lime tasting wine is really intense, and offers everything you could ever want from a Sauvignon Blanc. Including inspiration.
I have decided to simply pour myself another glass, and revert to my default mode of ‘do nothing.’ That way, the carrier bags will become just another slag-heap in the industrial landscape of my kitchen. They can blend in with the assorted clutter until they cease to exist in their own right.
I have no doubt that the day my son asks me to retrieve the brightly coloured caterpillar with fifty pipe cleaner legs will be the day after I have finally shovelled the lot into a black bin liner.

Fifty Sense

2007-07-09T20:15:00.000+01:00

The mighty Marks and Spencer has come to my rescue. Thanks to the divine intervention of St Michael, I will not be forced to wear orthopaedic shoes at the birthday dinner next weekend. Instead, a pair of turquoise strappy wedges (wider fitting) will transform me from dumpy frump into streamlined sylph – blink and you will miss me as I cha-cha-cha past, waving my glass of bubbly aloft. So what if my little toe hangs over the edge of the shoe like a sea-sick sailor? You can’t have everything.
Unfortunately, in my euphoria at scoring a pair of glam shoes, I forgot all about buying a birthday present. What do you get a fifty year old man for his birthday? He doesn’t drink much wine, so the ‘gift which says you truly care’ is not an option. There is a trend for buying ‘adventure days’ which allow the birthday boy to hurl himself around a racing track or parachute out of an aeroplane. But I reckon if you’ve managed to get to fifty without a coronary, it doesn’t seem very wise to tempt fate. A relaxing spa day is out of the question (this is no metrosexual male we’re talking about here), since I think any attempts at massage could result in an unseemly brawl. As for those enormous novelty balloons - I’m not sure what the attraction of a large balloon might be for anyone over the age of eight.
It appears that fifty-year-olds are no longer allowed to shuffle quietly into the realm of the old git, swathed in a baggy, threadbare cardigan, and clutching the crossword. Now they are all completing triathlons, or clambering across several thousand miles of coastline dressed in lightweight gore-tex.
I can remember a time when the term ‘male grooming product’ referred to a pair of nasal hair clippers, and that was it. Apparently today’s fifty-something male has the choice of applying anti-wrinkle cream or a face mask after shaving, rather than just slapping himself around the chops with a handful of Brut. It’s all very confusing.
As I am running through options for presents, I am aware that I am running out of time to buy anything. Slowing me down (thankfully) is this large glass of Bon Cap Syrah (Ocado £7.99).
This South African organic wine is a recommendation from my mate Peter at The Pinotage Club. H is more of a Shiraz fan than I am, but I like the peppery spice and liquorice aftertaste of this one, even if it is rather dry. It has certainly made me determined to try some of the Pinotage that they produce, if I can get hold of any.
As for the 50th birthday present, I’m still at a loss what to get. It’s all very well sashaying along to the dinner in my new shoes and party frock, but I don’t think that clutching a gift-wrapped Old Spice soap-on-a-rope is going to be appropriate, somehow.

Horse Shoes

2007-07-06T19:55:00.000+01:00

I am going to a birthday celebration next weekend. It’s a dinner in a smart hotel, and I need to scrub up a bit for it. I have a rather glitzy dress which hasn’t seen the light of day for about a year, and which offers the perfect blend of sleek sophistication (for when I arrive) and party animal (for when I leave). The problem is that the shoes I bought to go with the dress have been reduced to twisted, mummified corpses at the bottom of the wardrobe. I am going to have to find a replacement pair, and that means going shoe shopping this weekend.
Now, I love going shopping for clothes, especially if it follows a boozy lunch with a good friend, and involves swaying in and out of dinky boutiques, stifling giggles and daring each other to try on totally unsuitable stuff (tops that reveal upper arms, peasant-style dresses, anything lime green).
But no amount of alcohol can numb the despair and humiliation of shoe shopping. I often feel like I belong to a completely different species when it comes to the topic of shoes. Many of my friends get a bigger sexual thrill from ogling shoes than they do from ogling their husbands (but then looking at some of the husbands, it’s hardly surprising). Shoes have become a byword for wild-eyed womanly lust. Buying shoes apparently represents the orgasmic fusion of female desire, submission and subsequent guilt.
I read once that the reason women supposedly lust after fancy footwear is because shoes are an accessible piece of glamour for all women, regardless of their body size. So, no matter how large you might be, or how much weight you put on, shoes will always fit.
Well, I’m sorry, but that is a load of sh....oes. I am the unhappy owner of wide feet. When I was pregnant they were even wider. So wide that flip-flops seemed like a reasonable option in February.
Years of sitting in shoe shops trying to cram my robot feet into tiny strips of satin or leather have left me feeling like one of Cinderella’s ugly sisters. I might be able to go to the ball, but if I want to dance or do anything other than sit on a stool and annoy the bar staff, I will be forced to wear sensible shoes.
Shoe manufacturers seem to be convinced that anyone with wide feet must be over seventy and devoted to beige. I never knew there were so many shades of beige, but wide-fitting shoes encompass the whole beige spectrum. They can range from a delicate, pale ‘support stocking’, through to ‘corn plaster’, and all the way to a rich, dark ‘ear wax’. The excitement of buying a foxy, sparkly red dress diminishes rather rapidly when the options for accompanying footwear all involve neutral colours, comfortable one inch heels, and large buckles for easy fastening. Not exactly ‘f**k-me’ shoes – more ‘sit me down with a nice cup of tea’ shoes.
Before I decide to unleash my inner pensioner, I am going to unleash this Friday’s Drunk Mummy Cheap Fizz. It’s an Australian sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and was chosen purely on the basis of its cork – or its lack of cork.
I am a huge fan of the screw-top wine bottle, since the disappointment of a bitter-tasting corked wine is enough to reduce me to tears. This Deakin Estate Brut (Oddbins £6.99) has a cap like a beer bottle, and why not? It is impossible to force a cork back into a bottle of sparkly stuff (and who would want to anyway?), so the metal cap seems like a perfectly sensible idea.
Admittedly if you tried to ‘pop’ the top off in true party buffoon style, you might get severe lacerations to the eye, but then I have always thought such displays of forced exuberance to be a complete waste of good fizz. The celebrations at the end of a Grand Prix race usually have me tutting like a tight-lipped maiden aunt.
The idea of forcing a cork back into a bottle is an uncomfortable reminder of the hellish task that lies ahead of me tomorrow. I think I need another glass of this rough-and-ready Aussie fizz to cope with the prospect. It is quite yeasty, and creamy, but with a good crisp finish - just what I need!
I have noticed that some shops are starting to do ranges of shoes to fit wider feet, so I know that I am not alone in my splay-footed splendour. These collections are usually called something euphemistic like ‘comfort range,’ ‘eezee-fit’ or ‘heifer hooves’ but at least they do colours other than beige, so maybe there is a chance I might buy a gorgeous and vertiginous pair of heels to go with my party dress. On the other hand, perhaps I should just stick with flip-flops, and then I won’t have to worry about falling over at the end of the evening.

Sweet Charity

2007-07-04T18:55:00.000+01:00

We seem to be careering towards the end of the school year at an alarming rate.
It is particularly noticeable because every remaining day seems to require non-standard items of clothing, food or equipment in order to support the plethora of school charity days. This poses a dire threat to the well-rehearsed military precision of the morning routine. The school uniform may be all clean and ironed, but wait! It’s ‘Wear Something Blue Day’ to save water, or ‘Wear Something Yellowy-green Day’ to save the bile bears. We’ve already had ‘Wear Your Pyjamas to School Day’ and ‘Crazy Hair Day’ (both of which I endorse on a regular basis anyway). We are still living with the after-effects of ‘Crazy Hair Day’, since it involved copious amounts of coloured glitter spray. There is a fine dusting of the stuff over every surface in the house, and the bathroom looks like a drag queen’s dressing room.
At least the ‘French Day’ merely required that the children learn to shrug dramatically and mutter ‘C’est pas possible’ all the time. Parental involvement was limited to the provision of a few mouldy croissants, and a small donation to a charity which helps middle-aged women to buy matching underwear.
‘Roman Day’ was a bit scarier, involving gladiator fights to the death at playtime. The home-made toga was supposed to be straightforward, but all my sheets are fitted with elastic at the corners. So instead of a regally draped white toga, my son was sporting a pale blue billowing version with a puff-ball skirt. I forget what the charity was that day – something to do with sourcing vegetarian Christians to feed to vegetarian lions.
It may sound churlish to rail against all this fund-raising activity, but the majority of the charity days seem designed for the kids to have a big old laugh and eat lots of cake (there’s always a cake stall), while their parents run around throwing time and money at whatever outfit is required. I’m not sure that the idea of charity as an act of selflessness is actually getting through to the children.
It reminds me rather uncomfortably of a dinner party I went to recently where one of the glacial female guests peppered her conversation all evening with references to her ‘charity work.’ When I finally asked her what exactly she did for this charity, she smiled the benevolent smile of the morally superior and told me that she organised dinners and fashion shows to raise money. She lost no opportunity in reminding the other dutifully nodding guests of her extensive contribution, and clearly felt that her involvement with posh frocks and fabulous meals was enough to bestow the golden glow of virtue upon her own immaculate head.
I’m normally a very jolly drunk, but I couldn’t help wondering if she would be quite so charitable if asked to accompany a busload of incontinent pensioners on a day trip to Rhyl. Since there would be no call for a glamorous dress and limited opportunities for networking, I doubt she would be up for it. She didn’t look the type who would own a set of waterproofs, either.
Before I descend into total Scrooge-like malevolence, I need a glass of something to sweeten my mood. I think I have found the perfect solution in this glass of citrussy Leasingham Magnus Clare Valley Riesling (Sainsbury’s £7.99). This is a 2005, so there are no petrol fumes to contend with either. I happen to know that it is also a favourite of Heidi the kite-surfing, snowboarding dudette at Wood Vale Diaries.

I would like to nominate Heidi for my ‘Rockin Girl Blogger’ award, especially as she is someone who qualifies on all three counts. She gets to post the badge on her blog (by clicking on the badge, saving it as a picture, then adding it to the blog) and then to nominate someone else.
Heidi – I thought the pink badge might go with your new pink kiteboard!
Thank you Jenny from Mountain Mama for nominating me. I was absurdly delighted to be referred to as a ‘girl’ – can’t remember the last time that happened. Cheers!

Chinese Crackers

2007-07-02T20:20:00.000+01:00

On Saturday morning my daughter produced a letter from the murkiest recesses of her school bag, asking if any parents would be interested in paying for after-school lessons in Mandarin Chinese next year.
That would be lessons in the notoriously difficult language that has over 200 basic characters and four tonal variations, then? For nine year olds? For half an hour a week? It was one of those classic examples of not knowing whether to laugh or scream. So I did both, and screamed with laughter – causing plenty of alarm for all witnesses, since I am usually grimly silent when I’m in my dressing gown.
I try to keep my cynicism under wraps when I am around the children (which is why I don’t talk to them much), so I had a hard time explaining to her why this was such a preposterous idea, without employing the terms ‘half-baked’, ‘pushy parents’ or ‘total insanity.’
I am convinced these lessons must be some knee-jerk reaction from the otherwise sensible headmistress, in response to the beady-eyed contingent of mothers who are constantly looking for that extra competitive edge for their children.
A quick whiz around on Google reveals that Mandarin Chinese is considered to be one of the most ‘economically useful’ languages to learn, for obvious reasons, and will make those who can master it attractive to future employers.
All very true, and in the case of nine year olds, all very depressing.
I can’t help thinking that the school’s efforts might be better spent on improving the provision for sport in the summer term. Even when it hasn’t been raining, there have been constant cancellations of rounders lessons (because the grass is slippy) or athletics lessons (because the track is slippy) or swimming lessons (because the water is slippy).
I seem to remember that when I was at school, there was a similar belief that the burgeoning South American economy meant that you would be virtually unemployable unless you could speak Spanish, or even better – Portuguese. There must be thousands of people my age who are now seriously disillusioned to find that the only benefit resulting from years of intensive Portuguese study is that they can order a Caipirinha off a ladyboy at a Mardi Gras carnival.
A scout around the Drunk Mummy Wine Vaults to unearth something Portuguese has produced just the one bottle of Tesco Finest Touriga Nacional (£5.99). It is very robust, and tastes slightly of prunes. I think that means I ought to have another glass – for the roughage, of course.
I was reading on Google that the four tonal variations in Mandarin Chinese can result in a word like ‘ma’ meaning either a mother, a horse, hemp, or a reproach, depending on the tone. Looking at that list, it would make you convinced that there is some sort of embedded word association going on there too.
Perhaps ‘pa’ can mean (depending on the tone) a father, a rat, beer, or leaving the toilet seat up.

Pillow Talk

2007-06-29T20:22:00.000+01:00

This hasn’t been a good week for sleep.
I haven’t been ill (I’m not allowed to be) but on the rare occasions that I feel unwell, I just want to be left alone to hibernate silently in a corner of the bed. My children, on the other hand, are keen to share their illnesses and the detailed descriptions of their symptoms at all times of the day and night.
It’s only when I have interrupted nights that I remember what life used to be like about five years ago. In those days it seemed that my ear was fine-tuned to the slightest noise my children made in the night. Muffled yelping and snuffling meant bad dreams which needed to be calmed with a gentle motherly hand on the forehead. Rapid breathing indicated a high temperature, which required a brisk but dextrous dose of the Pink Panacea. A sudden gagging noise resulted in instant SAS siege tactics of leaping across to the bedroom and dragging a green-faced floppy child to the toilet bowl, all in one manoeuvre.
My, how things have changed.
These last few nights each sickly child has had to stand beside the bed and yell my name about five times before I have even stirred. At one point I even incorporated the droning noise into a particularly satisfying dream where 'Muuuummmm' was being chanted by a chorus of young (but strangely attractive) Buddhist monks.
Until this week, I didn't realise how much I have started to drool in my sleep. Each time I was woken up, my cheek appeared to be stuck to the pillowcase. It got increasingly difficult to find a dry bit of pillow. I have long been used to avoiding the damp patch in the bed, but on the pillow? I wonder if H is aware of this particularly attractive new habit. Does he wake up in the night with amorous intentions, only to take one ardour-quenching look at his dripping corpse of a wife? Given that it's dark, I suppose he can't see me lying there with jowls like a rabid dog. If he were to put a randy hand on my pillow though, he would probably think my head had been leaking slowly all night. I'm not even sure what exactly is leaking out. Saliva? Excess wine? Venom? When the pillowcase finally does dry out, it looks like a piece of parchment, so it could be that I'm oozing slaked lime.
Maybe I am just getting to that age where bits of the body start to re-align. Hips and knees are well documented for developing worn-out hinges, so there's every possibility that my over-worked jaw no longer closes properly. It won't be long before the body parts which used to operate in pairs start to strike out on their own, demanding to be acknowledged as individuals. That's the point at which I will start referring to 'my good eye' or 'my bad leg' or 'my good ear'. God knows what will happen to my breasts - one will probably shrivel away quietly while the other joins a line-dancing class, and then has a whirlwind holiday romance with a Masai warrior.
At least I only need one hand and one mouth to enjoy this Friday’s cheap fizz - a bottle of Cave de Lugny Sparkling Burgundy (Ocado £5.99 down from £7.99 until 3/7). It’s dry and biscuity (sounds like a cure for seasickness) and although it tastes like real party juice, it lacks a good finish.
If it starts oozing out of my head tonight, I wonder if it will still fizz when it hits the pillow?

Domino Effect

2007-06-27T20:07:00.000+01:00

Two of my kids have been struck down with a mild flu virus. They have been too ill to go to school, and have spent the last couple of days wafting around the house like tragic laudanum-soaked characters from a Victorian novel. It started me wondering what the collective noun for slightly ill children is. A wheedle? A wilting? A drape?
Part of me was tempted just to sit them in front of the all-powerful TV, simply to get them out of my hair for the day, but since they would view this as the ultimate treat, I know I would never be able to get them back into school for the rest of the year.
I thought about descending on them like one of those mad-eyed women who threaten their children in high, sinister voices that 'we're going to have some fun now, aren't we?' But after so many years of maternal neglect, I'm not sure they would have coped with the sudden overdose of attention - it would probably have brought us all out in a rash.
I tried suggesting brightly that they do something 'educational' but they treated that suggestion with the contempt it deserved, by simply staring at me with their rheumy eyes until I went away.
In the end, I (rather conveniently) decided to let them get bored senseless, so that they would be clamouring to be allowed back into school tomorrow. Unfortunately most reality TV isn't on until the evening, and there are no politicians pontificating during the daytime schedules either, so we had to look for our tedium elsewhere.
Prolonged staring at the wall did the trick, but resulted in them falling asleep for most of the afternoon, so just before bedtime they were fully recovered and bouncing off the walls.
It was at that point that I finally turned to drugs - for them, not me, although a crafty swig from the Night Nurse bottle wouldn't have gone amiss. Putting my trust once again in St Calpol (the patron saint of a good night's sleep), I am praying that they will both be crashed out for the whole night - or more importantly, that they won't wake me up every couple of hours.
I thought about having a hot toddy myself this evening, as a preventative measure of course, but they usually cause me to sweat like a pig, and I don't want to wake up thinking I have somehow slipped into the menopause overnight. So instead, I have opted for milder medication in the form of a glass of Oyster Bay Chardonnay (Ocado £6.39 down from £7.99 until 3/7). It is fresh and subtly oaked, and it's having a wonderfully relaxing effect on me.
Unfortunately, I am also realising that even if both children are back in school tomorrow, the third is probably just about to come down with the same illness.
I think I am going to need more medication.

Sunday Service

2007-06-25T21:19:00.000+01:00

Well, Sunday lunch was a big success, in that we ate loads and drank loads, and no-one threw up.
It hadn’t been the most auspicious start. The invitation was for midday, so I spent the morning in complete denial by reading the newspapers, crunching Coco Pops underfoot, cursing at the kids - all the usual Sunday morning stuff. It was only at about 11am that the true magnitude of what I needed to achieve within the next hour gradually dawned on me.
Like the beginning of a machine wash cycle, I started off just moving slowly backwards and forwards across the kitchen, without actually doing anything. Gradually I began to build a bit of momentum, prodding at a few piles of dirty washing and crusty plates. Within half an hour I was up to full spin, whipping through the house, removing all traces of the life we really do live (toenail clippings on the sofa, fourteen pairs of shoes in the hall) and trying to replace it with the pretence of a more civilised version. The finished effect was hardly ‘Homes and Gardens’ but at least the living room didn’t look like a crack den any more.
I had earmarked the last 15 minutes to run upstairs and attempt the final bit of ‘Sunday lifestyle’ deception – clothes and make-up. Therefore you can imagine my blind panic when the doorbell rang at 11.45 and I was trapped in the kitchen, still wearing my (rather stained) dressing gown.
Like many women my age, my un-made-up face bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to my fully-made-up face. So, for one fleeting moment I considered pretending that I was the live-in help. That promise of salvation was short-lived when I realised that I don’t look underfed enough to be really convincing in the role. Also, the stained dressing gown would have been grounds for instant dismissal under the draconian hygiene standards demanded by employers of domestic staff.
So, with skin like blotchy porridge, and eyes like pee-holes in the snow, I went into the hall to greet the guests, smiling brightly through anaemic lips.
I needn’t have worried. The couple who had arrived early have a three year old and a six month old baby, and were therefore so sleep-deprived that I could have been wearing full clown suit and wig, and I doubt they would have noticed.
I left H to steer them gently towards the drinks, and escaped upstairs, emerging 15 minutes later, slathered in industrial quantities of concealer, and wearing something suitably floaty and relaxed. The whole intention was to create an impression of effortless style, but I nearly gave myself a coronary trying to achieve it. The contrast, though, was so dramatic that I had to introduce myself all over again to the baby-infused couple. I think they spent the rest of the afternoon vaguely wondering when the pasty-faced domestic was likely to appear again, and hoping that she hadn’t touched any of the food.
At about 12.45 the other family arrived, just as we were popping the cork off the second bottle of Lindauer. Since their children are seven and five, they had been delayed by the usual arguments and mock threats of stopping the car, and pretending to drive back home. By the time they got to our house, they had actually covered the total distance twice over.
As the meal got underway, and the white wine flowed, it became easier to ignore the constant interruptions from various children. By the time we hit the red wine, the kids had finally realised that we were shouting louder than they were, so they sensibly left us alone and went upstairs to imprison each other in the wardrobes. We didn’t see them again until the two designated drivers (the dads) decided they really couldn’t stand any more of their wives’ shrill hilarity, and shovelled them into their cars along with the children.
One of the wines our guests brought was a fabulous Saint RocheVin de Pays du Gard (Ocado £5.49). This fruity organic red went really well with the fresh, meaty shepherd’s pie. It’s a shame there isn’t any of it left, as a large glass would certainly liven up the congealed mass of leftovers we are eating tonight.
Perhaps it’s just as well I’m abstaining. The children came down for breakfast this morning and started a rousing chorus of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ when they looked at the detritus. I had to buy their silence with sweeties, but I know that our excesses are documented every Monday in that Stalinist invasion of privacy known as the ‘My Busy Bee News’ exercise book. I did tell them that the clear bottles are for lemonade and the green ones are for limeade, but I don’t think they believed me.

Hostess With the Mostest

2007-06-22T20:05:00.000+01:00

The weekend is here! Bring it on! Two whole days to relish the dubious delights of the family unit.

Sunday mornings chez Drunk Mummy are usually a pyjama-fest (or ‘dirty protest’ depending on the hangover), where the kids sit and watch junk TV while H and I sit and read junk newspapers. Later on we all sit down to endure the mutual misery of a meal together.

Family conversation topics can range from politics (‘Stop doing that!’) to religion (‘For Christ’s sake, will you sit down!’) to philosophy (‘Why do I bother?’). We occasionally delve into the deeper, more cerebral issues of analytics (‘Who farted?’), logic (‘Well, it wasn’t me!) and ethics (‘Will you stop it, it’s really unpleasant!’).

This Sunday will be different. We are having friends over for lunch. Actually, I say ‘friends’ but despite the fact that they are both extremely pleasant families, the dads are also H’s work colleagues. Somehow that fact makes me feel that ‘best behaviour’ is called for – mine rather than the children’s.

I think my sensitivity stems from a rather unfortunate incident when I had just started going out with H. We met up after work with some of his colleagues to go to the theatre, and although I didn’t realise at the time, I was about to be struck down with a stomach bug (honest!). I felt fine during the pre-theatre drinks, and even managed a G&T at the interval. But by the middle of the final act, the auditorium had become stiflingly hot, and I suddenly started to feel rather queasy. I realised that since I was in the middle of a very long row, it would be unlikely that I could hurdle over legs and briefcases fast enough to get to the loo in time. I retrieved my brand new handbag from under my seat, and started the frantic scramble for a tissue. Of course, there was nothing so practical in my bag in those days – just credit cards, lipstick and a couple of condoms. In that split second of rising panic and rising puke, I decided that I really couldn’t spoil this lovely new bag, so I vomited into the sleeve of my suit.

Fortunately, H realised what was happening and propelled me very rapidly to the exit, galloping over the tangle of feet. I remember clutching the cuff of my sleeve to prevent the armful of vomit falling out onto the other people in the row.

If H was horrified at this display of pitiful ingenuity from his new girlfriend, he had the decency not to show it. Instead, he covered me with his own coat, looked after me, and took me home in a taxi. Reader – I married him. But he can’t say that he wasn’t warned!

Anyway, the upshot (or should I say ‘upchuck’) of this episode was that one of H’s female colleagues always referred to me afterwards as ‘Vomiting Veronica.’ My, how I laughed! I laughed even more when she got fired.

So, on Sunday I am determined to present myself as a paragon of sobriety.

Who am I kidding? I know that after all the bustle of preparation on Sunday morning (scraping the mould off the hand towels, shaving the toilet bowl) I won’t be able to resist a few glasses of fizzy when the guests arrive.

Once the main meal is on the table, I can start to relax with a few glasses of white, then move on to the red. Dessert will involve lurching towards the freezer for a tub of ice cream and a couple of spoons, and by the time it gets to the coffee, I shall be propping my feet up on a chair, and waving vaguely in the direction of the kettle.

I have bought a few bottles of Lindauer Special Select (Ocado £7.99 down from £9.99 until 3/7) for the pre-lunch drinks on Sunday. But in the interests of research (and because it’s Friday night) I am drinking a glass of it now.

It has a very unusual salmon pink colour, and tastes a bit like nutty, yeasty biscuits, but without the choking risk.

It was in the ‘Vomiting Veronica’ era that I discovered Lindauer. Back then, it was one of the very few sparkling wines that could hold its own against the snobbery of champagne. Now, of course, we are spoilt for choice with good, cheap fizz.

I’m sure our guests will enjoy it too, and at this price we can drink three bottles for the equivalent cost of one bottle of champagne.

I think on Sunday I might wear a long-sleeved top. Just in case.

Out of My Box

2007-06-21T21:04:00.000+01:00

I have never been tempted by those organic produce boxes which many people have ‘delivered to the door.’ For starters, they include vegetables that you actually have to peel before you cook them – you can’t simply prod a plastic bag with a knife, and bung it in the microwave, like normal vegetables. It seems that cooking them requires considerable amounts of creativity too. I’m not sure I would know what to do with a courgette (no rude suggestions, please) never mind a bulb of fennel. Do you screw the fennel into a light socket? As for chard – that could either be a salad leaf, or a general description of my cooking.

I was asking some friends today why they pay for these boxes which require them to eat purple–sprouting broccoli for the entire month of February, or Brussels sprouts when it isn’t even Christmas (can you imagine the horror!). One of them, who is a very good cook, said that she liked being challenged in the kitchen. I nearly suggested she come round to my house and I would introduce her to my kids. They challenge me in the kitchen on a regular basis.

What really surprised me was that most of my friends signed up to these organic box schemes because the company which delivers them donates 20% of the cost to the school that their children attend.

Now, I can’t decide who is the more cynical – me, or the company that delivers the boxes.

This marketing masterstroke enables them to exploit the lucrative combination of parental guilt and charitable donations in one fell swoop.

The organic produce box enables you to feed your kiddies with healthy vegetables (you know you should) and you can donate money to their school at the same time - how can you resist? Everybody wins!

Hmmmm, everybody that is, except the frazzled mums who now have to spend twice as much time trying to make an evening meal out of celeriac and alfalfa sprouts, while paying handsomely for the privilege.

I am feeling rather irritable about this. Yet again, I seem to be out of step with everyone else’s warm fuzzy glow. My own method of generating a warm fuzzy glow will be to demolish the best part of this bottle of cherry-and-plum Secano Estate Pinot Noir (M&S £6.99) from Chile. It needs a bit of time to breathe (don’t we all) but now its silky finish is gradually smoothing my raised hackles.

During today’s conversation, one of my friends did concede that she’d had a lot of trouble getting her kids to eat some of the vegetables that had been delivered. ‘We eat an awful lot of soup at the end of each week’ she said, ‘and the rabbit is looking really healthy these days.’

I can’t see myself taking delivery of any organic produce boxes in the near future. I think I’ll just stick to wine boxes.

Summer Diary Delights

2007-06-20T19:43:00.000+01:00

It seems to be crunch time with summer holiday arrangements. All those ‘Yes, let’s get together in the summer....’ procrastinations are coming back to haunt me. I have blurred memories of several occasions this year, when, full of bonhomie (and red wine) I cheerily waved a warm, smudged glass in the air, and signed up verbally to various tin pot ideas. Now the net is closing around me, and I am being pinned down for dates. Each entry into the diary feels like a nail in the coffin of our summer freedom.

I really envy people who just clear off somewhere for the summer. ‘Sorry, we’re away for the holidays’ they say breezily, with an unconvincing attempt at disappointment. As a way of fending off the diary-toting hordes, this really is a trump card. How I would love to wave goodbye to everything back home, and just head for the hills, dragging the kids and a trolley full of wine behind me. Come to think of it, if the hilly terrain got too arduous, the kids could just return home and fend for themselves.

We are going away for a couple of weeks here and there this summer, but we seem to be the only family not taking a holiday based on topics from the National Curriculum. If I was able to go on holiday to Rome, I would want to cavort in the Trevi Fountain in a strapless evening gown, like Anita Ekberg, not haul three moaning brats around the Coliseum. If I went to France, it would be in order to drink good, cheap wine and eat smelly cheese, not to kid myself that the children are learning to speak French just because they can now order ‘un sandwich au jambon.’

I am firmly of the opinion that children don’t need holidays – their parents do. I have heard people say that it’s important to provide holiday memories for your children, but since none of mine can even remember what they had for breakfast, I have serious doubts.

My own form of escapism tonight comes in the form of a particularly luscious Diemersfontein Pinotage (Ocado £7.99). This South African beauty was recommended to me by Peter at The Pinotage Club, who describes it as ‘coffee and chocolate in a glass.’ I can’t add anything to that, it is such a good description, and makes you wonder why you would ever need to eat or drink anything else in your lifetime. There is a little quote on the label at the back of the bottle saying

‘It befriends – It converts – It seduces’

which makes it sound like a particularly sinister but racy church group (one way of expanding the congregation, I suppose).

Peter is also the author of a wonderful book, about unusual wine labels which has the extremely memorable title of ‘Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape.’ It will definitely be on my letter to Santa this Christmas.

As I am sipping this pinotage, I am hatching an escape plan for next year that will enable us to say that we are ‘away in the country’ for the whole summer, on an educational trip for the children, which encompasses their maths work, language skills, geography projects and plenty of exercise. It will also guarantee some indelible memories for them. The shortage of fruit-picking migrant workers in the South East could be my salvation. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I will let the kids keep any of their wages.

Wine Dinner Wipeout

2007-06-19T19:32:00.000+01:00

Well, the Wine Dinner certainly was a lot of fun, and I certainly have been paying the price for such reckless abandon on a Monday night.

My new belt performed its sartorial duties with aplomb. The only problem was that the more I had to drink, the more I considered the belt to be an interesting topic of conversation: ‘Ah, yes, really bad news about your acrimonious divorce - ran off with the trainee didn’t he, how dreadful (pause) - do you like my new belt?’

The belt did take its revenge by gradually tightening its grip across my stomach over the course of the evening. Just my luck to buy a belt with sadistic tendencies. I suppose it just became tired of battling against the tide of food and drink I was consuming, and annoyed at finding no support in this unequal struggle from my stretchy trousers. I have noticed that I am starting to look for the lycra component in trousers in the same way that some people look for the percentage of cocoa solids in chocolate. Anything less than 70% and I’m not buying.

Anyway, the Wine Dinner aperitif was one of those very fashionable award-winning English sparkling wines (this was a Ridgeview, but I have also tried Nyetimber before). Now, I don’t wish to be disloyal to the English winemaking industry, but delightful as these fizzies are, I think they are really expensive (the Ridgeview is around £18). There is so much good cava and prosecco around, that I just wouldn’t pay the money for this. I suppose there would be some huge cachet in serving it at a drinks party and braying to fellow competitors about your ‘sourcing of local produce, darling,’ but you might just as well serve cider and say the same thing. In fact, it may just be me, but there is an unmistakeable hint of cider about these English sparkling wines. I love cider (I have an emergency can of Strongbow lurking at the back of the fridge) but I wouldn’t pay twenty quid a bottle for it.

Having ‘mingled’ to excess, it was a relief to sit down and enjoy the whites – a young, citrussy Australian riesling (as I suspected there would be) and a rich Chilean chardonnay which had a lovely long finish.

Talking to the organiser, it seems that my problems with riesling all stem from my over-reliance on choosing wine by grape type, and ignoring the vintage. Quite frankly, I always feel that for my level of wine enjoyment (I just want to drink it, not have its babies) knowing which grape types I like is sufficient. Not so with riesling. The petrol-tasting rieslings which I can’t stand are the older vintages, which are also more expensive. The younger wines, with their crisper, more mineral taste are the ones I like, and they cost less too. I always have been a bit of a cheap date.

The reds were a peppery St Joseph (Rhone Valley) and a rich, warm Argentinian Chacayes (cabernet sauvignon and malbec) which made me want to hunt down and savage a raw steak. Certainly, the beefy young waiter seemed to be rather nervous around me. I think he was worried I might try and lasso him with my new belt.

Finally, the pudding wine was a wonderfully light Napa Valley moscato. Thankfully this delicate peachy brew is only 8%, and at that stage in the proceedings, it could make the difference between getting out of bed the next morning or not.

Talking of which, I think I need to lay off the wine tonight, and aim for a Drunk Mummy Detox - a bacon and egg butty, cup of tea and a good night’s sleep.

Shopping Trollied

2007-06-18T18:59:00.001+01:00

I had a lovely treat this weekend. I met up with a friend for lunch and a bit of shopping. We drank way too much over lunch, laughed way too loudly, and banned all use of the ‘c’ word from our conversation (meaning, of course, ‘children’).

This friend has known me over half my life, and has therefore borne witness to the many great disasters and occasional small triumphs within that period. She has an enviably slender figure, a great sense of style and a very rich husband. You would think I might choose my friends more wisely, wouldn’t you?

Going clothes shopping with her is something of a vicarious pleasure. Maybe this is what it feels like to construct a Second Life avatar. You can dress your avatar in all those items of clothing that look dreadful on you in real life. So, that chiffon ‘gownless evening strap’ that merely accentuated my farmer's tan? Put it on my peachy-skinned friend instead, and it looked great. Those tight cropped leggings I barely managed to squeeze into, and which made my legs look like a string of sausages? On her long lean limbs they looked fabulous. Even the ‘must have’ patterned smock tops just made me look like I ‘must have’ a very strange sense of humour. As my avatar friend effortlessly amassed a complete wardrobe of fashionable trousers and skirts, with numerous co-ordinating tops, I managed to buy a belt.

I did notice that the shops seem to be full of linen trousers - the fool’s gold of fashion. They always look fantastic when you put them on in the changing room, but I know from bitter experience that this effect is extremely short lived. If you are so reckless as to sit down in them, even for a few minutes, then be prepared for the full gypsy accordion effect when you stand up again. And why do the hems always curl up at the edges like slices of stale ham? I reckon that the majority of people who buy linen trousers don’t actually do their own ironing. I own one pair, and I think I have spent longer trying to iron a straight crease into them, than I have spent actually wearing the damn things. Life is just too short for linen trousers.

Anyway, I will be wearing my new belt tonight (but not my linen trousers – I haven’t got two hours to get ready) at another Wine Dinner - hurrah! The ‘theme’ of this one is simply wines which are personal favourites of the organiser. I am a little bit anxious, as I know he has something of a soft spot for Reisling - a wine that I have locked horns with on many occasions. Sometimes it is delicious, (like the Waitrose Pfalz £4.99 recommended a while ago by Stay At Home Dad, although Ocado don’t seem to stock it any more) but other times it’s like drinking petrol. It should be a very interesting evening.

Spare Tyres

2007-06-15T21:09:00.000+01:00

I am generally indifferent to the allure of cars, even really flash ones. Although I might lust after someone else’s house, or their wine cellar, I just can’t get to squeaking point about cars in the way that a petrol head like Jeremy Clarkson does.

There are plenty of performance cars on the roads around here, which I presume must reflect their owners’ performance bonuses. But between the speed bumps, central islands and mini-roundabouts, I don’t see how they ever get the chance to ‘perform’ on their home turf (rather like their owners, I suspect).

The traffic calming measures in the area are designed to stop anyone reaching either third gear or more than ten miles an hour. Despite this, I managed to burst one of the front tyres two weeks ago, with an ill-judged manoeuvre through a chicane. The alarming gunshot noise made me think I was in the vicinity of the first ‘school-run Mum’ suicide, but when I pulled over, I realised that although the tyre was damaged, it was still possible to drive the car to the tyre fitters for a replacement.

Ever since I read an article about tradesmen who charge female customers more than men for the same job, I have veered between depressed supplication, and aggressive chippiness whenever I deal with a male ‘repairer’.

Sometimes I feel that I ought to trust in the innate decency of another human being not to rip me off. But then I am sure this approach invites a premium on my bill, since it makes me look as if I am too ineffectual to complain.

Other times I try and present myself as some sort of kick-ass broad who knows what I am talking about, so don’t mess with me. This is always a tricky approach with plumbers due to the risk of being unmasked as a fraudster if I confuse my stopcock with my spigot.

The deciding factor seems to be whether or not the tradesman reminds me of my Dad. If he does, I am happy to trust in the milk of human kindness. If not, then I launch into bolshie smartarse mode. Not exactly a scientific approach, I know.

Unfortunately, the man at the tyre fitters had eyes like a robber’s dog. He would not look directly at me, preferring to suck air through his teeth and shake his head slowly as he inspected the tyres. I was already squaring up to him mentally, even before he suggested that both front tyres needed replacing, not just the passenger side one that I had damaged.

‘Ah, not so fast matey, I know your game’ I thought, and declined his kind offer while smiling primly at him, to let him know that I am not just another female sucker he could rip off with unnecessary extra tyre sales. I drove away congratulating myself on my street-wise shrewdness.

Earlier this evening, H went out to pick up one of the kids, but came back in saying he needed to put the spare wheel on first, as the driver’s side front tyre has now gone flat.

He can’t understand why I really don’t want to take the car back to the tyre fitters on Monday.

As it is Friday night, I have opened a bottle of my favourite La Marca Prosecco (Ocado £5.99). This ‘party in a bottle’ is always great to drink on its own, but tonight I think it will go especially well with the large slice of humble pie I have to eat.

The Reveal

2007-06-14T21:22:00.000+01:00

As I expected, my trip to the hair salon today has not resulted in any Cinderella-style transformation. When the stylist held up the mirror, so that I could see the back, I was lost for words – well, I had already used up all the appropriate ones for this exact same hairstyle on my previous visits.

My subconscious has blotted out the details of payment, on the basis that it could threaten my sanity, but when I stood by the reception desk trying to look pleased with my helmet of rigidly-coiffed hair, I could have sworn that the young girl who brought my coat referred to me as ‘Your Majesty.’ But maybe I’m just paranoid.

At least having my roots done has meant that my hair finally looks clean, which is a good thing, but it also looks extremely sensible which, for some reason, doesn’t feel quite so good.

My daughter told me that she thought my hair looked nice, so I smiled chirpily, and pronounced myself ‘delighted’ with it. Surprised? Ah, but I know that mothers are not supposed to keep making negative comments about their appearance in front of their daughters. Usually I am fed up to the back teeth of advice for parents, and the implicit blame that goes with it, but this one seems to make a lot of sense to me. In addition, I have been keeping a wary eye on her recently – a sort of ‘Daughter’s self-image watch’ (a bit like Springwatch but without the horror of Bill Oddie or owl fratricide).

A friend who also has a nine year old daughter told me last week that her beautiful girl has started to say that she thinks she is ugly. Whether this is because of teasing by schoolmates or from comparisons with models or pop stars, my friend has no idea. Both she and her husband have constantly tried to reassure their daughter, but to no avail.

I seem to remember going through similar feelings myself, but not at that young an age, I’m sure. I remember my parents used to go out of their way to tell me I was beautiful, but as always, I dismissed their viewpoint outright since I thought they were madder than monkeys. It wasn’t their opinion that mattered to me, but the opinion of whichever monosyllabic spotty youth I happened to have a crush on at the time.

I am thinking about all this as I am cradling a large glass of Bonterra Zinfandel from California (Ocado £9.99). It is rich, spicy and peppery and very relaxing. I had an e-mail from Jane in San Francisco who recommended the Dashe Cellars Zinfandel, but so far, I have been unable to get a bottle. Jane really made me laugh with the confession that sometimes she telephones a friend in a more Eastern time zone, so that she can bring forward the time of her evening glass of wine by an hour, and make it seem a little more respectable. Ingenious! I think if I had access to all those fantastic Californian reds, I would be doing exactly the same thing.

When I tucked my daughter into bed a few minutes ago, I told her how beautiful, how lovely, how gorgeous and how pretty she is.

‘Yes Mum’ she intoned in a flat, bored voice, which sounded vaguely familiar. I can see already that my biased opinion is fairly worthless in her eyes. Maybe I would be better saving my reassurances for when she starts visiting the hair salon.

Hair Of the Dog

2007-06-13T21:17:00.000+01:00

I am getting my hair cut and highlighted tomorrow. It actually needed doing about six weeks ago, but trying to book consecutive appointments with a stylist and a colourist is harder than gaining an audience with the Dalai Lama. With the combination of extensive dark re-growth and long straggly split ends, my head is starting to resemble a jellyfish.

In the past when I went to the hairdressers, I used to look for inspiration by flicking through the salon’s magazines. I gave that up when I realised that pointing hopefully at a photo of some glossy-maned model always sent the salon junior into a fit of giggles. I also remember one particularly sulky stylist mumbling something about being a hairdresser, not a magician. Time after time, my bright-eyed optimism has been dampened by the assertion that I don’t have ‘that sort of hair’ by which, I suppose, they mean the sort that actually looks good after a trip to the hairdressers. So now, I just sit there swathed in sweaty nylon, while the stylist cuts my hair in exactly the same style I had before, regardless of what I asked for. Still, on the bright side, I have ample opportunity to sit in front of a large mirror, staring at my haggard reflection, and marvelling at my increasing resemblance to my mother.

I often wonder why no-one is allowed to escape the salon’s clutches without having their hair blow-dried. I would quite happily just give mine a brisk rub with a towel on the way out, since I always hate the way they blow dry it, and can’t wait to re-do it myself. Whenever the stylist enquires above the noise of the hairdryer as to whether I am going out that night, I always have to resist the temptation to shout ‘No, I have already missed this year’s Bobby Charlton convention.’

The final insult in this whole sorry exercise is the extortionate cost. Every time I pay a hairdresser’s bill, I swear that next time I’m going to cut it myself. But, like wearing pop socks with a skirt, it seems that cutting your own hair is one of those unmistakeable signs of descending into muttering insanity.

I am taking some consolation in a glass of chilled Araldica Madonnina Gavi (currently £5.99 down from £6.99 at Ocado). This wine is a regular tenant of the Drunk Mummy cellar, and its crisp, clean lemon taste is just what I need. I am starting to think about radical action tomorrow on the hairstyling front – a Mohican perhaps, or maybe dreadlocks? I could always opt for a rebellious streak of bright blue, like an East European au pair. Sadly, I expect that I will simply be sitting here tomorrow with a shorter, blonder version of what I have now, and a considerably lighter bank balance.

The Tattooed Lady

2007-06-12T21:17:00.000+01:00

My nine year old daughter has recently taken to covering her arms with tattoos. Not the inky-blue prison varieties, but sparkly iridescent butterflies and flowers. They are like the old fashioned ‘transfer’ tattoos I loved as a child – but better. There is none of that ritual disappointment when you lift the paper off too soon to reveal only half of the pattern.

I suppose the tattoos are a step up from the lurid felt-tip body art she used to enjoy as a toddler, which was always completely indelible, despite over twenty minutes of feverish scrubbing in the bath.

Therefore, I can see that it is only a matter of time before she wants to decorate her lower back with some vast black Celtic cross, or cover her shoulders with the Chinese symbols for ‘fried rice.’

I don’t have any tattoos. I very nearly got one in my twenties, but as with everything else in those days, I just couldn’t make the commitment. I was living in Paris at the time, and along with two close friends, thought it would be ‘hilarious’ if we each got a French cockerel (symbol of French sporting excellence) tattooed at the top of one thigh. We thought the tattoos would give us all sorts of conversational opportunities (‘Would you like to see my coq?’ or ‘People say I’ve got balls, but I’ve got a coq as well!’) although I’m not sure they would have been the most successful chat-up lines.

We went so far as making an appointment at a tattoo parlour, and turning up on the night. But when we got there, the tattoo artist was so far behind with his appointments, there were still three people waiting ahead of us. We were due at a party that evening, and since we were all getting a bit thirsty, we decided to just forget it and go to the party instead. My friends wanted to re-book the appointment, but secretly I felt it was a lucky escape. I had actually spent the previous night lying in bed staring at the ceiling, in a futile attempt to imagine the rest of my life, and whether or not the cockerel tattoo would fit in with it. How ridiculous that I never suffered any such concerns over the decision to have children.

I remember my American friend was particularly unforgiving about my gutless ducking out. ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ she demanded ‘Start dating Senators, or something?’ I am embarrassed to admit that with the arrogance of youth, I replied that I just might. What I didn't realise at the time, was that I should have just gone ahead and had 'Put Your Shoes On' tattooed on my forehead - it would have saved me no end of grief twenty years later.

Another trip down memory lane comes in the form of this glass of Lindeman’s Bin 65 Chardonnay (I think it’s on offer at Tesco at £4.78). I doubt there’s anyone in the country between the ages of 20 and 50 who hasn’t tried this melon-tasting stalwart. I think it’s very pleasant, but it does remind me of dire ‘dinner parties’ in the 80s when young people sat around doing their best to emulate their pompous middle-aged parents. Maybe if I had gone ahead with the cockerel tattoo, I could have livened up the dinner party conversation. As it is, I’m not sure how I will react when my daughter decides she wants a genuine tattoo – I suppose compared to a cockerel, a gothic skull or red devil won’t seem quite so bad.

Press 'Pause'

2007-06-11T20:27:00.000+01:00

I am beginning to suspect that H may be on the verge of a mid-life crisis.

He would not be the only male I know to succumb. For starters, I have lost count of the depressing tales of family men being caught with their pants down recently. It seems they are frequently drawn to someone who looks remarkably like their own wife, but without the slippers or the post-pregnancy paunch.

Then, at a party this weekend, a lawyer friend announced that he needed to ‘find his true identity’ and was therefore about to chuck in his lucrative but soul-destroying job for something more fulfilling. As everyone clustered around to applaud his brave decision, I couldn’t help noticing his shell-shocked wife in the background, nodding enthusiastically and smiling through gritted teeth. For her 45^th birthday present, she had been handed the role of sole breadwinner, rather than the pedicure voucher she was hoping for.

I suppose with drastic behaviour like this, I should be relieved that H’s particular obsession is fairly benign. Our finances preclude the purchase of that typical symbol of mid-life crisis - a ‘male meno-Porsche’ so instead he has bought a pair of in-line skates.

To be fair, as well as being an all round Boy Scout, H has always been a good skater – a sort of Ray Mears on wheels. He used to rollerblade to work when he was young and carefree, and was therefore a frequent recipient of abuse from motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike.

However this weekend, he returned from a skating trip with more of a glow than usual. Apparently, a car full of teenage girls had beeped their car horn and waved at him as he skated along. All fairly innocent, you might think, but no - he has been down at the gym this morning, clearly convinced that his body is now a temple at which young women will come and worship. Bless!

More worryingly, he has declared his intention to abstain from drinking wine. Surely such self-delusion has its limits? Clearly some action needs to be taken to avoid irreparable damage to our marriage. Therefore, in an attempt to lure him once again with my oenophile charms, I have uncorked a Tesco Finest Beyers Truter Pinotage (£7.99). I am certain that the spicy blackberry flavour will convince him of the error of his ways. How could he fail to realise that a lithe limbed lovely offering him a swig of her alcopop cannot compare with the delights of drinking decent red wine? Even if it does mean sharing it with a woman whose teeth are gradually turning blue.

It's Cosmic, Man

2007-06-08T20:34:00.000+01:00

I am being driven to the end of my extremely short tether by the amount of school paraphernalia my kids have lost recently. They now have a record of ‘disappearances’ that would put a military dictatorship to shame. The list includes a pair of trainers, two cardigans, two pairs of football socks, a waterproof jacket, P.E. shorts and vest, 3 pairs of swimming goggles, and two pencil cases.

When I was young, my school uniform was treated with the sort of reverence that is given to a priest’s ceremonial robes. Each item was supposed to last for about three years, regardless of how quickly I was growing. As a result, in some school photos, my uniform is so short and tight that I look like I am dressed for one of those adult ‘School Disco’ nights.

Losing an item of uniform not only incurred the considerable wrath of my mother, but it also meant that I had to wait for the next three year buying period before it was replaced. Some children love to flout the restrictions of school uniform, but as a card-carrying conformist, such unintentional rebellion caused me endless anxiety. I vowed, therefore, that if I ever had children, I would calmly accept that sometimes they just lose things, and then quietly get a replacement.

So where did it all go wrong?

This morning, my daughter was as unconcerned as ever about the mysterious and repeated disappearance of her school cardigan. I tried to explain why it was important to find it, but there wasn’t even a flicker of acceptance of any personal responsibility. I started on the gentle interrogation, but this appeared to have no effect either. By the time we were at the school gates, I had gone completely over the top, and was dispensing acrimonious threats. Her bright optimism about the cardigan’s prodigal return had now evaporated completely, and as she turned to go into school, her little face was pale with misery. Walking away, I tried to justify to myself that she needed to learn some accountability, but needless to say, I felt like a complete sadist for the rest of the day.

This afternoon, when I picked her up from school, the detox period away from her mother’s verbal venom had worked a treat, and she was her usual ebullient self – and still without her cardigan. With uncharacteristic restraint, I pretended not to notice, choosing to seethe inwardly instead.

Now that they are all in bed, the chance to wash away the lingering taste of vitriol comes in the form of an Ackerman Laurence Sparking Saumur (£5.99 Ocado).

Friday night is always Cheap Fizz night chez Drunk Mummy, and I really wanted to like this, as an alternative to my beloved prosecco. But although it is light and yeasty, it doesn’t have a great finish – a bit like that sensation when you have just missed out on a sneeze, or an orgasm (delete as appropriate, depending on your sex life, or your hayfever symptoms).

It seems that I will either have to believe in the existence of a ‘school uniform black hole’ somewhere in the cosmos that is sucking these items in, with apparently no hope of their return, or resign myself to another ten years of shrewish scolding.

Strangely enough, the more I have of this Saumur, the more I am starting to feel an affinity with the theories of Professor Stephen Hawking. If I finish the bottle, I may need to borrow the great man's wheelchair.

All Present and Correct

2007-06-07T21:05:00.000+01:00

I went out today to buy some presents for yet another round of birthday parties that the kids will be attending in the next few weeks. I once added up how much I spent in a year on birthday presents for other people’s children. It is not an exercise I would recommend. I couldn’t stop myself from equating the cost with the number of cases of champagne that I could have bought instead – I was miserable for days.

Thankfully, my kids have now got to an age where birthdays no longer involve a party for the whole class. This means we now have the occasional weekend where H and I are not on permanent chauffeur duty, and our annual birthday present expenditure has dropped from ‘obscene’ to merely ‘uncomfortable.’

Unfortunately though, the birthday children are no longer at an age where they all want a day-glo pony with a tangled nylon tail, or a double-jointed superhero - regardless of how many they already own.

Despite the obvious practicality, giving money to the 7-10 age group seems to be frowned upon. Maybe there is a suspicion that feckless parents will fritter it all away on booze rather than invest in something ‘educational’ for their little darling – which is not a bad idea when you think about it. The only solution I can think of, that allows the children to choose something they actually want, is vouchers.

Now, I know my sons and their friends would prefer a voucher for the local video game shop, so they can continue to fry their brains with high definition graphics. My daughter and her friends would rather have a voucher for ‘Claire’s Accessories’ so they can deck themselves out with fluffy headbands, bracelets and body glitter. I would rather have Majestic Wine vouchers, for obvious reasons, or failing that, book tokens, but that’s because I am a forty-something mother of three (and I already have enough body glitter).

In the end, I was so fed up trying to decide, that I got several book tokens, and several vouchers from the other shops as well.

I’ve now got my feet up, enjoying the spicy cherry flavour of a glass of Tesco Finest Corbières Reserve (£4.99) and trying to match up each voucher with the appropriate child. It’s a bit like a card game, but with the added complication of having to consider which parents consider video games to be the work of Satan, and which would have their feminist principles offended if their daughter bought some sparkly hairslides.

Thankfully, there are always the book tokens, but I can’t help wondering if the recipients of these will just end up wanting to swap them for cash from their parents, and then blowing the lot on the Pic ‘n’ Mix sweetie section of Woolworth’s.

On that basis, I should have just bought Majestic Wine vouchers all round.

If Music Be the Food of Love, I’m On a Diet

2007-06-06T20:43:00.000+01:00

I went to my son’s school Music Evening tonight. It was scheduled early enough in the evening to be a logistical nightmare for anyone with younger children, but not late enough to make it easy for working parents to get to.

The result was that all the front rows of seats in the hall were taken up by a coterie of glossy, fragrant mums, freshly dressed in cool white linen separates, relaxing their perfect posture only sporadically in order to share a few conspiratorial laughs at other people’s expense. Shoe-horned in at the back with laptop bags the size of rucksacks, were the creased sweaty suits and creased sweaty brows of the working parents. As several of them tiptoed in during the head teacher’s opening address, the area at the back of the hall began to resemble a refugee camp. When the loud electronic beeping of a mobile started to emanate from the jacket of one poor sod, there was a collective swishing noise from the front rows, as manes of salon-straightened hair revolved in unison to register the owners’ tight-faced disapproval.

After the jolly music teacher had arranged the choir on stage, and persuaded all the small boys to remove their hands from their crotches, the music evening began.

There is something really lovely about hearing children sing together. Any little mistakes make the performance even better, somehow. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of children playing musical instruments. As one nervous child after another made his way up to the stage, the assembled parents were treated to a form of aural torture that ensured nobody would nod off.

After about half an hour I started wondering why music teachers always insist on putting a few popular tunes in the repertoire. I can guarantee that if any child played whole sections of Bach or Beethoven incorrectly, the majority of the audience (myself included) would remain blissfully unaware of his mistakes. Pity then, the little boy who had to play ‘Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini’ on the violin. Perhaps it’s my fault, for just wanting to sit and tap my feet like a pensioner at a day centre, but as he valiantly see-sawed through the piece, each member of the audience started leaning slightly forward, willing the next screechy note to emerge on time, and not flat.

Back in the relative peace and quiet of my kitchen, I am relishing a cold glass of flinty, lemony Les Ruettes Sancerre (M&S about £9 a bottle, I think).

Thinking about tonight’s performance, I am wondering whether it was actually the audience that might have put the children off. Not only did the poor kids have to contend with the glare of laser-whitened teeth from the front row’s rictus grins, but they also had to block out the antics of the camcorder-wielding dads, who were busy reversing centuries of male competition by trying to see who had the smallest.

Guten Tag

2007-06-05T20:10:00.000+01:00

I have only just realised that Nunhead Mum Of One tagged me while I was away camping. I was doing some catching-up on all the blog news last night, so I’m a bit late. I don’t know if there’s supposed to be a ‘blog by: date’ on these tags, but here we go:

I once ate 36 oysters in one sitting at an ‘oyster appreciation’ event. I don’t think the organisers realised quite how much I appreciate these little bivalves. I washed them down with copious quantities of Chablis (goes really well), champagne (goes less well, but what’s not to like about champagne?) and Black Velvet (Guinness and champagne, which doesn’t go very well at all, but by then I was just showing off).
My name is not really Rusty Burke, despite the article 'Ten Reasons Why I Could Never Be an Eco-Mother' which I wrote for the Bad Mothers Club website. (Nothing like a bit of self-publicity, eh?)
I was once sunbathing topless with a friend on the beach at the Cannes Film Festival (she yawned) when we were surrounded by about 200 men with cameras, all clicking away furiously (some of them even had film in them). My friend grabbed her bikini top to protect her modesty, but I just grabbed my sunglasses to protect my anonymity. Needless to say, this was all in the pre-children years. It still remains my one and only paparazzi moment.
My favourite book is a collection of short stories by Helen Simpson called ‘Hey, yeah right, get a life.’ I think it should be handed out to all new mothers, instead of the usual tracts of finger-wagging ‘information.’
I used to row for Great Britain Under 23s. That’s ‘row’ as in boats – not ‘row’ as in argue, although I daresay H might suggest I was equally well qualified for the latter. Obviously, it’s a long time since I was ‘Under 23.’
When I was in labour with my son, I was on all fours when his head emerged out of my nether regions. He stayed like this for about 30 seconds, and even opened his eyes and started to cry, before the rest of his body was born. H admitted that it was one of the more bizarre sights he had seen in his life. I imagine it must have looked like Dr Doolittle’s Push-me-pull-you.
I was Head Girl of my Catholic convent school – and yes, they are always the worst. The experience left me with a strong commitment to atheism and a bizarrely feminist love of wine (from enviously watching the priest guzzle all the communion vino, while we girls had to make do with a 'host' wafer which had the consistency of school toilet paper).
I used to be the Women’s Sport editor on a student newspaper, which had Jeremy Vine as its editor. I sometimes think I should call one of his phone-ins and say ‘Hi Jeremy, remember me-eee?’ but I doubt I could take the public humiliation of his reply.

It seems that lots of my blog buddies have already been tagged, so I’m going to nominate a few bloggers whom I have met only recently. Apologies for this if you have already been tagged before, and if you don’t want to join in then, speaking as a lifelong breaker of chain letters, that’s fine by me.

So, over to you:

Vanessar- The Fidra Blog

Akelamalu

Elsie Button

Cybil, aka Wife, Mom, Drunk

Natural Blonde

I have been sipping a few glasses of Ernest and Julio Gallo White Zinfandel (Ocado £4.99) this evening whilst drawing up my list. Despite the name, it is a rosé, or ‘blush’ as it is known in the States. It is fruity and extremely sweet – probably too sweet for me if it wasn’t really chilled (that doesn’t mean I won’t drink it). I notice that it’s only 9.5% which would make it a good wine for a picnic, or for when you don’t want to fall asleep and start snoring after a couple of glasses (at breakfast, maybe?).

Going Wild In the Country

2007-06-04T20:01:00.000+01:00

We are back from camping in the rugged terrain of the Lake District, and I have finally released my matted hair from the Croydon facelift I have been sporting all week. Oh, the joy of soaking in a fragrant, hot bath! The delight of sleeping in a comfortable insect-free bed! The relief at the absence of ripe Camembert smell when I wave to someone!

I suppose the trip was a big success in that the children avoided contracting e coli, and I have only a mild case of trench foot. In fact, the weather wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but that could just have been the combined effects of copious wine consumption and lack of sleep. I also know that if you go on holiday in this country, then there is really no point in complaining about the weather. If the Home Office is short of questions for its ‘Britishness Test’ for citizenship, then they could do a lot worse than include the following:

Where is the best place for a picnic?

a) a shady and sheltered spot to avoid the harmful rays of the sun

b) an area where no wild animal habitats will be disturbed, or fragile eco-systems damaged

c) the car

If you answer c) then you will have captured the very essence of what it means to be British, and should instantly be issued with a passport (which means you can also go on holiday to a country with better weather).

The old-fashioned trailer tent proved to be excellent, and cut our usual tent-pitching time from over two hours to less than one, which matters a lot in the UK monsoon season. It did attract lots of interest from fellow campers, several of whom wandered over to tell H that they had ‘never seen one like that before.’ It’s a long time since anyone said that to him, and being a very friendly sort of chap, he was happy to discuss its various merits. Meanwhile I skulked around in the background, wondering when the other campers were likely to start throwing buns at us.

I had forgotten what sheer hard work camping is. People talk about the ‘slower pace of life’ that camping encourages, but I’m convinced that this is a rather skewed perception. It takes longer to do everything, so you are actually much busier. When we first took the kids camping a couple of years ago, I was surprised to see so many people on camp sites just sitting in foldaway chairs outside their tents, doing nothing. It wasn’t long before I realised that they were relishing a few precious moments of inactivity before yet another round of meal preparation or tidying up the limited floor space.

Of course, the kids loved every minute, because for them it was one long session of playing with mud and sticks, frightening the wildlife, or damaging their retinas by shining a torch directly at each other’s eyeballs.

We did do a lot of cycling, which was great fun, apart from the discovery that my waterproofs aren’t as waterproof as I thought. As with all this outdoor kit, we seem to have spent a fortune on good quality items for the kids, while H and I make do with ancient gear from the days when nylon was considered a high performance material. Being a bit of a softie, the one thing I have invested in is a gel-filled saddle cover for my bike, despite the obvious invitation for ribald commentary that my seat is already more than adequately upholstered. Frankly, neither my under-carriage nor the saddle cover proved to be well-cushioned enough, and I am still walking like a cowboy. I’m not sure how you are supposed to prevent this – it’s not as if you can apply surgical spirit to the area to toughen it up in advance.

Despite the Spartan conditions, H and I did have some quiet, relaxing evenings huddled under the awning, in the romantic glow of the citronella insect-repellant candle. As five sets of waterproofs dripped onto our heads, he would sit cradling his warming glass of Irish whisky, while I would sit cradling my warming 3 litre box of Hardy’s Stamp Shiraz-Cabernet (Sainsbury’s £14.99 down from £19.99, and definitely one of the better wine box reds).

Preparations for bed would start with me slipping (rather hurriedly) into my thermal underwear, laughably called a Superwoman set (I don’t recall Lynda Carter ever looking like this, unless she moonlighted as a mime artist on her days off from saving the world). With just the three additional layers of socks, track suit and fleece, I would be all ready for a snuggle in the double sleeping bag. However, since H was similarly dressed, the only crackle of passion we managed was the static from the bobbly brushed nylon sleeping bag. Any romantic inclinations had to be weighed up against the combustion hazard of electricity and the large quantities of methane gas issuing from the boys.

Back in the cosy confines of the kitchen, I am knocking back a couple of glasses of spicy Lindeman’s Cawarra Shiraz Cabernet (Sainsburys £4.99) in memory of our camping trip. The only problem is that a mere 750 ml wine bottle looks rather tame in comparison with a mighty 3 litre wine box. Maybe there are some benefits to camping after all.

Trailer Tent Trash

2007-05-25T20:45:00.000+01:00

I can’t believe I have been so completely suckered by the elements. The recent hot weather lured us into booking a camping holiday for half term next week. I should have realised that, as Monday is also a Bank Holiday, there wasn’t ever going to be the slightest chance that the weather would be good. That now looks like being a complete understatement. I believe the forecast is for torrential rain, gale force winds and temperatures of around 11 degrees – all very character building.

I need to state upfront that camping is not really my idea of fun. In my family though, that opinion puts me in a minority of one. H, the eternal Boy Scout, loves setting up rusty gas stoves and mouldy sleeping bags, whilst whistling ‘Ging gang goolie.’ The kids love running around non-stop for days, unwashed and slightly feral. There is some consolation in that I usually take a wine box (or two) but this is for medicinal and anaesthetic purposes, of course.

We are travelling up to the Lake District, which is one of my favourite places in the country, but the vegetation there is green and lush for a very good reason.

This time, we are taking a trailer tent that we acquired from my brother. This clever contraption folds out to a full, if rather basic, tent in minutes. Unfortunately, in the apartheid world of camping, a trailer tent places you firmly in ‘no-campers’ land. You are shunned by the owners of cosy camper vans and glossy motorhomes, because of your humble ‘trailer trash’ status, and you are scorned by the hardened canvas addicts because you clearly aren’t suffering enough to be camping properly.

Camping is not the most romantic of getaways, either. Despite the fact that H and I have a cosy double sleeping bag, the lack of basic personal hygiene becomes an increasing barrier to intimacy as the week wears on. If smelling like a Greek wrestler’s jock strap isn’t enough to dampen one’s ardour, then the seductive night time survival kit of thermal underwear, track suit, thick socks and a woolly hat is sure to do it. I don’t think I need to elaborate on the additional passion-annihilating effects of having your children sleep near you in an enclosed space.

As a last ditch attempt at some luxury before the austerity, I am opening a bottle of the Drunk Mummy Favourite Fizz – La Marca Prosecco (£5.99 Ocado). I’m wondering whether I should take some of this with me next week - I could always chill it inside the sleeping bag.

Sadly, I will not be taking my laptop with me (it’s not waterproof), so I can’t blog for a week.

Have a great Bank Holiday everyone, and for those blessed with children, have a stress-free half term (ha!).

The Bore and The Trout

2007-05-24T20:28:00.000+01:00

A friend was telling me today how she was going to meet her husband for lunch at a very nice restaurant. Apparently they do this every couple of months - which I think is rather romantic. I would imagine that it feels like a secret tryst, or having an affair. I suppose the drawback is that you can’t have much to drink at lunchtime, so there wouldn’t be much point in eating either.

I can just about remember the last time H and I met up for lunch. It was definitely in the years BC (before children) and I think it may have been when we had just got married. We were at this wonderful foodie pub, where children are either not allowed, or are sensibly chained to the car park railings. The sophisticated menu was chalked up on blackboards, rather than printed on wipe-clean laminated cards, and there wasn’t a nugget in sight. At least ten wines were offered ‘by the glass’ so it seemed churlish not to sample them all. We ordered our food, then gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes and talked about films, music and books. These were the sort of topics that filled our lives in those days. The conversation flowed effortlessly, due to the total lack of mid-sentence interruptions, assisted visits to the loo, or the need to apologise every five minutes to nearby diners. I didn’t bang my head on the table once, as there were no crayons to retrieve from under it. (I did bang my forehead on the mirror in the Ladies, though – trying to apply lipstick with one eye shut to help me focus).

After half an hour, the rather stressed waiter/manager came up to H and delivered the immortal line:

‘Are you the bore and the trout?’

We weren’t quite sure how to respond to this, until we realised that he was talking about the wild boar and fish that we had ordered. Apparently there was a problem in the kitchen, and the food was going to take a bit longer to prepare. This actually wasn’t a problem as far as we were concerned. It was just an opportunity to continue the world tour we were taking across the wine list.

I didn’t even have to confiscate all the knives from the table while we were waiting.

I have retrieved a bottle of Villa Maria Private Bin Gewürztraminer (£8.49 Ocado, Sainsbury) from my fridge. It has been driving me mad, because I can’t for the life of me remember which blogger recommended it, and I do like to link the blog to the post. Not only does this omission indicate how rude I am (I didn’t make a note of the name, only the wine), but it also shows up rather glaringly where my priorities lie. I have sifted through all my post comments, but it’s not there. If you recognise that you recommended this wine, please let me know, so I can thank you. It is very exotic, and tastes of lychees and, strangely enough, ginger. My knife is poised to perforate the plastic on the Thai curry, and I think this wine will go with it perfectly.

I have been thinking that maybe H and I should try and give this lunch time dining without kids another go. I long for those lazy, languid lunches of old, but I don’t suppose it will ever be the same again. Would the conversation be about cutting edge recreational events, or exotic travel? Or would we just sit there and talk about the next visit to the grandparents, whether its my turn for a lie-in at the weekend, or some nasty rash that has appeared on one of the kids?

Property Porn

2007-05-23T19:40:00.000+01:00

Most days, I drive past a lovely but rather run down house, which is being extensively renovated. I could not afford this house even when it was a complete wreck. I read about it when it was for sale a few months ago in one of the local ‘property porn’ publications which I consume frequently but furtively. I know its wrong to look at these magazines, but I just get drawn in, even though I always end up feeling ashamed of myself afterwards. I have also found recently that I need more specialist material to get the sort of thrill that I had when I first started flicking through them out of curiosity.

Anyway, I have been watching the progress of this renovation, and the house is nearly complete. The builders on the project are a group of burly middle-aged men who had decided to remove their T-shirts today and reveal the full glory of their bowling ball bellies to the outside world – or maybe I’ve got it wrong and they are all seven months pregnant.

As I drove along in a very slow moving line of traffic, with the car window down, I had a chance to marvel at the new roof, ogle the freshly painted windows, and lust after the side and attic conversions. I don’t think I was drooling. Well, not excessively.

My fantasies were rudely interrupted when one of the builders, obviously a stranger to the salad bar, shouted at me from the scaffolding: ‘Getting an eyeful, love?’ and winked.

There really was no suitable response. I either had to let him continue the sublime self-delusion that he is something of a demi-god, whose rotund, hairy torso is worthy of worship, or confess my sad, carnal property lust.

I opted for the middle ground, and told him I was just admiring his bay window.

Tonight, I am drinking a glass of Tesco Finest Howcroft Estate Shiraz (£7.99). H is more of a Shiraz fan than I am, but this is a good smooth one which tastes of raspberries.

I am hoping it will help to dispel the deepening concern that I am now of an age where builders on scaffolding think I am lusting after them, rather than the other way round. Perhaps attack is the best form of defence. Tomorrow I shall drive past the house and yell at the assorted builders’ bums: ‘Look at the arse on that – you could park your bike in there!’

Maybe I should just have another glass of Shiraz instead, and try to keep my dignity intact.

Ol' Red Eyes Is Back

2007-05-22T19:53:00.000+01:00

I’m struggling a bit today. My eyes feel gritty, having over-dosed on the Eye Dew (blue) last night. The whites have gone from the bluey whiteness so beloved of housewives in soap powder adverts, to looking like road maps. My voice has deepened to a ‘bar-room baritone’ from too much drinking and laughing (and probably too much shrieking loudly, but I don’t want to think about that right now).

The Italian Wine Dinner last night was fantastic. I knew we were on for a great night when we started with a prosecco which was wonderfully fresh and light. Prosecco is rapidly becoming my favourite fizz. Why drink one bottle of champagne, when you can drink four bottles of prosecco for the same money? When the chap talking about the wines mentioned the huge increase in sales of prosecco recently in this country, H started shooting me meaningful looks, as if my personal consumption was solely responsible.

There were two white wines – a delicate, peachy Pinot Grigio, and a very unusual Soave, that tasted of apricots, with a creamy finish (who needs desserts when there are wines like this!). I haven’t drunk Soave since I was in my twenties. We used to put it in the fridge with the one and a half litre bottle of Lambrusco, and chill it so much that you couldn’t really taste anything.

The reds were interesting too. There was ‘a nice Chianti’ (thankfully not served with liver and fava beans) which all the women at our table liked, and a big, syrupy, alcoholic Barolo, which all the men preferred.

Finally, there was something I have never drunk before - a red Valpolicella dessert wine. I’m not a big fan of 'stickies' but this was very pleasant – a bit like sneaking a slug of undiluted Ribena straight from the bottle.

I think I need to stay off the juice tonight, or until my voice goes back to its normal pitch. I have spent the day sounding like a female impersonator. If I had better hair, clothes and make-up, I might look like one too.

The Italian Job

2007-05-21T18:32:00.000+01:00

In my opinion, when it comes to indulgence, Italy seems to have hit the jackpot – great food, great wine, and great weather.

When I was nineteen, I spent a summer there, selling books door-to-door. I paid for my own flight, and spent three months travelling around Italy selling books that I couldn’t read, and ‘speaking Italian’ by adding ‘i’ onto all the French words I knew. Bizarrely, it seemed to work, and although the job was something of a slog (the pay was commission-only) it was great fun, especially as I was with a group of other young people of different European nationalities – including French, Spanish and Dutch.

To my young parochial eyes, Italian boys looked well-groomed and sophisticated as they whizzed about on Vespas, or drank strong coffee in pavement cafés. They were so much more glamorous than the boys I knew at home, who hung around outside the chip shop, with a meat pie and a can of Tizer.

In Italy, I learnt how wonderful it feels when someone says you are beautiful - even if the gorgeous preening youth is actually looking over your shoulder at his own reflection.

When I think back to that summer, I am astounded at my own youthful optimism. I had never been away from home on my own before, and I remember my mother really didn’t want me to go. She was convinced I would be sold into the white slave trade, and threatened to hide my passport. I did a lot of foot-stamping, snorting with derision, and rolling my eyes, like a mad horse. I even had the temerity to suggest that she had read too many Jackie Collins bonkbusters (doubly unfair, since ‘sneaking a peek’ inside the one she had read was the only sex education I had ever received). More like a cheeky mare than a mad horse, then.

All this reminiscing is because H and I are off to another Wine Dinner tonight, and all the wines are from Italy – what a treat! Of course, the food is Italian too, but I think I would be happy just drinking the wines, and opening a tin of Heinz spaghetti.

I am mortified to say that over twenty years after battling with my mum about my trip to Italy, my daughter and I regularly re-enact the eye-rolling scene, as she tries to break free of her own parental shackles. It is one of the many cruel twists of fate involved in becoming a parent that the role of my mother is played, with startling accuracy, by me.

Bedroom Secrets

2007-05-18T20:24:00.000+01:00

Well, the netball was great fun last night, but despite an excellent start and a thrillingly close match, England lost 40 – 47 to Australia.

Disappointing though it was, there was no ripping up of seats at the venue, and no fighting or smashing of car windows on the way back to the station. Just lots of excited girls (young and old) holding hands, waving flags and singing.

Of course, as a result of the late night, I had to drag my daughter out of her bed this morning. It took me about ten minutes to find her under the pile of assorted soft toys, cushions, random strips of material and hair accessories. It looked like ‘'Tracey Emin - The Early Years'.

I noticed that she also had Action Man’s evil nemesis Dr X in there. Not the clean cut hero Action Man whom you would introduce to your parents, but the thuggish bald-biker-lookalike Dr X. Her attraction to a character that has his own weapon of mass destruction for a left arm is a little disconcerting, but I’m sure this is a mere taste of the greater horrors to come.

A quick look in the boys’ bedrooms shows that the gender gap is alive and well, and as wide as ever, even in the under-tens.

One son appears to be nesting, judging by the scraps of torn comic, inserts from video-game covers and the odd Top Trump card. The other has neither soft toys nor books in his bed, just large quantities of grit.

Friday night means Cheap Fizz night, and tonight I am drinking a Marques de Monistrol Rosé cava once again (£6.49 Oddbins). Its quite dry, with a slightly bitter finish reminiscent of burnt currants (I’m not doing a very good sales job here, I know).

It’s rather sad in some ways, but we have been trying to encourage the kids to stay out of our bed, now that they are getting older. This has been driven more by embarrassment on my part, than anything else. One morning last week, my son climbed in next to me for a cuddle. I don’t wish to reveal too many bedroom secrets, but he had the misfortune to lie on the evidence of our marital bliss (i.e. the damp patch) - an unusual situation for a male of any age.

‘Oh Mummy’ he said, with disappointment in his voice, rather than disgust, ‘You’ve wet the bed!’

It shows what a coward I am that I just admitted it, and said rather meekly that I would try not to do it again.

Bully For You

2007-05-17T14:45:00.000+01:00

Last night’s parenting workshop on bullying was very informative. I went to one of these school workshops a while ago on the topic of ‘Self esteem’ which was also very helpful. I had been to that one because I was a little concerned that one of my kids seemed to be rather anxious and unsure of himself (but then, if you read this blog, it will hardly come as a great surprise, given his mother).

Instead of fanning the flames of parental neurosis, the workshop helped me to see that in fact, he doesn’t have low self esteem at all. It’s just that many of the kids in his school suffer from eye-wateringly high levels of the stuff.

High self esteem seems to be the modern parenting Holy Grail, it’s what we all want for our kids, to help them become strong, confident individuals. But it also has a very unfortunate side effect, which is lack of empathy. The woman who ran last night’s workshop pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, many bullies do not suffer from low self esteem at all. In fact they frequently have way too much of it, which is why they have very little empathy with their victims. I know it’s not a simplistic topic, but this makes a lot of sense to me.

There was a great section at the end of the workshop about what to do as a parent if you think your child might be being bullied. Among the suggestions were the following:

1. Don’t over-react (moi?).

2. Talk to your child about what has been happening (without going into Spanish Inquisition mode I suppose. So, no staccato machine gun fire of: ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Who did?’ ‘When did this happen?’ I don’t think they encourage the use of the term ‘little shit’ either).

3. Communicate with the school (The fantasy scenario of grabbing the bully by the throat at the school gates and threatening them will have to remain a fantasy then).

If one of my children was being bullied, I think I could probably manage the first two. I’m not so sure about the third. Deep breath. Repeat the new mantra: “I am a grown-up.”

I am posting early today, so I am without my usual ‘mother’s little helper’ glass of wine, which always helps to correct my warped perspective.

I am taking my daughter to an International netball match after school. England beat New Zealand (world champions and Commonwealth gold medallists) earlier this week, for the first time in 32 years. Tonight they face Australia, who are currently second in the world rankings, so we shall both be screaming our heads off (no change there for me then!).

Pump Up the Volume

2007-05-16T17:39:00.000+01:00

I was walking along the pavement to school with the kids this morning, when I had one of those heart-in-mouth moments. My youngest, playing ‘It’ with his sister, dodged away from her on the pavement and stepped into the road, narrowly missing a car.

I have a loud voice. It’s the sort of voice which can perforate eardrums, and shatter windows.

In full fishwife mode (and I don’t mean Sweet Molly Malone), I bellowed at them both to “Come here NOW!” The entire street appeared to freeze, and then a couple of kids whom I’ve never met started to gravitate towards me obediently. There was even one harassed-looking man in front of me, who turned and, for a nanosecond, started to move towards me too. He just managed to stop himself in time, but our eyes had already met and registered our mutual embarrassment.

My children, of course, were the only two people in the street to take no notice whatsoever.

The problem is that I have continually ‘raised the bar’ in terms of the volume I use to address the kids. They take no notice of any instruction issued in a moderate voice. Therefore, for anything to get done, I need to shout to add the necessary emphasis. This has continued across the years, with the amplification gradually ratcheting up. When it got to intolerable levels, I made a major effort to go in completely the opposite direction, and say things so quietly that they were forced to listen. However, this resulted in me talking to them in the menacing tones of an East-end gangster, and was equally ineffective, although it certainly frightened some of the other mums.

More recently, I have concentrated hard on not shouting so much, but the trade off is that I have to repeat every request ad infinitum. The result is a pressure cooker effect, where I am determined to maintain a calm control of my voice, but am forced to breaking point by the repetition. The longer I try to maintain control, the messier the subsequent explosion.

There seems no way back from the Mummy As Shrew scenario. I want to wipe the slate clean and start again (if I had a penny for every time I have said that as a parent.....I would have £19.73).

I think I might try and start tomorrow by communicating with them in whispers. I reckon we will be back to full Godzilla roaring within the week.

I am not drinking any wine tonight as I am going to a workshop for parents on bullying, organised by the school. I can guarantee they will say that if you want your children to avoid being bullied, DON’T SHOUT AT THEM!

Feeding Time at the Zoo

2007-05-15T20:10:00.000+01:00

This afternoon, I managed a nagfest of epic proportions. Starting with the school pick-up, I nagged my kids at considerable length about such diverse topics as lost items of school uniform, wrestling on the kitchen floor (them, not me), lolling on the sofa instead of doing homework, and the inappropriate use of the word ‘gay.’

By the time it came to putting their meal on the table, I was all nagged out.

As they moaned about the food, then picked bits up with their fingers, slurped, belched and generally mucked about, I wondered whether or not I could summon up the inclination to tackle the exhaustive topic of ‘table manners.’ Maybe just getting them to use cutlery properly would be a start, and to stop slurping their drink, which in turn might prevent the gaseous emissions.

In the end, I settled on merely trying to get them to eat with their mouths closed, so we wouldn’t all have to watch that washing machine effect of food swirling around in their jaws. Even this proved difficult, as they are all at the stage where their mouths can barely contain their emergent second teeth.

After about forty minutes of meal time, I didn’t really care how bad their table manners were, just as long as they ate the damn food, and then I could clear up the mess and get on with doing the bath and putting them to bed.

I do think that good manners which are based on kindness and consideration for others are important, and I think that is a battle worth fighting with my kids. Table manners though, are very close to the domain of etiquette, and that is something for which I have very little patience. It appears to me that etiquette exists in order to provide snobbish divisions between people, on the basis of whether or not they know some small piece of irrelevant information.

I really don’t care whether people eat asparagus with their fingers or their fork – I am more interested in whether they would like sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio with it.

So much that falls within the realm of table manners seems trivial or misguided. Reading at the table is bad form, but boring people senseless with conversations about property prices or good schools is considered acceptable.

Why is placing your elbows on the table so impolite? I have been to dinner parties where I would gladly have placed my forehead on the table to alleviate the utter tedium, but I could appreciate how bad-mannered that would have appeared. But elbows on the table? Sometimes my elbows have been the only thing stopping me from sliding gently under the tablecloth.

Having barked at the kids through bath time and bed time, I am now sitting here with something to revive my jaded spirits. It’s a glass of Saint-Véran Blason de Bourgogne Chardonnay (£8.99 Ocado). It has a fresh melon taste, and it's hitting the spot perfectly.

I know that I’ve got to put some effort into improving the kids’ table manners, otherwise they will continue to eat like cavemen. This point was rammed home a few weeks ago, when my daughter had a friend over for tea. This very polite, civilised little girl asked if she could have a fork to eat her piece of cake. As I handed it over, and she delicately manoeuvred a bite-sized piece into her mouth, I looked across at my three. They looked like pigs hunting for truffles.

Another glass of this chardonnay, I think.

You Are Offal - But I Like You

2007-05-14T19:32:00.000+01:00

The ‘American Moms’ visit went extremely well. They very kindly brought New York Yankees T-shirts for the kids, so I spent a good ten minutes trying to explain to my three about baseball. No, not really like cricket. Yes, a bit like rounders, but with steroids.

There was no sniggering about fannies (from me), and only one cringeworthy moment when one of the kids asked in his best Little Lord Fauntleroy voice what a ‘dawg’ was.

I decided to make good old fashioned Bangers and Mash for lunch, as this seemed to strike the right balance of authentic British grub, but without the terror-inducing properties of offal. I had forgotten how easy it is to frighten Americans with talk of steak and kidney pie. An American friend once had to leave the room when I happily described how my Mum used to feed us roast lamb hearts. I think subsequently she always viewed me as a not-so-distant relative of Hannibal Lecter. Good job I never told her that I like a nice Chianti.

I have become a lot more squeamish about food as I have become older. In the past, my ‘cast iron stomach’ has ingested all manner of stuff from frog’s legs, snails, tripe, brains and various other glands. I have even eaten Rocky Mountain Oysters, but I thought they were just a load of bollocks. I am not so adventurous any more – I just tend to stick to liver, or black pudding, and am partial to the occasional tongue sandwich (but that’s another story).

I am finishing up the last leftover glass of Montana Reserve Pinot Noir, Marlborough (Ocado £9.99). It just sneaks in under the £10 pain barrier, but it is so smooth and silky, and I knew it would go really well with the sausages.

Judging by the way my kids view everything on their plates with the utmost suspicion, I really cannot see a great future for offal, despite the huge part it has played in the culinary history of our nation. But then, there will always be sausages, which contain all the wobbly, stringy and gristly bits that we can’t face, but just chopped up very small, so that we don’t quite realise what it is we are eating.

Madeleine McCann

2007-05-13T21:58:00.000+01:00

Mothers Day, USA

2007-05-11T19:12:00.000+01:00

Sunday is Mother’s Day in the USA. I know this because we are having some American visitors over for lunch. Two friends from New York are flying over to England with their mothers, as a Mother’s Day present, which is a bit more upmarket than a handmade card and a box of Maltesers. Part of their trip is a visit chez Drunk Mummy, for Sunday lunch (eeek! I’ll have to get out of my dressing gown!).

I am unfashionably fond of Americans. I think they get a really bad press. The USA is a country of 300 million people, yet there frequently seems to be a snobbish and rather patronising tendency to portray them all as George Bush-loving thickoes, with no sense of irony. If people were to make assumptions about me (as one of 60 million people) on the basis of Tony the Vicar of St Albion, and reality TV, I would be seriously hacked off.

I find most Americans I meet to be extremely friendly, once you get over the initial shock of hearing a middle-aged lady discuss how she has put weight on her fanny. It also surprises me when they are derided for their insincerity (see T. Blair, above) especially with regard to customer service. So what if the American shop assistant doesn’t really care whether or not I actually do have a nice day? I would rather have fake interest than the genuine disregard I encountered today from the languid shop assistant, who glared at me for having the cheek to want to actually buy something. I think she was annoyed that I had interrupted her long-running daydream about becoming (or maybe just having) a personality.

The other important cultural difference that I need to sort out when meeting up with American friends is the use of the phrase ‘really pissed’. I suppose it’s possible to be really pissed when you are really pissed, but then, no-one likes an aggressive drunk.

I ought to be drinking something American tonight, but I have been waiting for Friday night to finally sample a Marks and Spencer rosé Prosecco (£7.49). This is a recommendation from Rob and Silvana at Landcroft House, whose blog is always a feast for all the senses. I love prosecco, and this is an unusual one - fresh and light, it reminds me of those ‘cherry lips’ sweeties I used to get when I was young.

It seems that I have a few cultural prejudices to overcome in my own household. When I told my kids that our friends were bringing their mothers over for a visit, and that one of these lovely elderly American ladies was really looking forward to meeting them, one of them asked me “Will she have a gun in her handbag?”

Maybe I will tell them that she has, just to make sure they behave themselves.

Putting the Men in Mensa

2007-05-10T20:21:00.000+01:00

I was standing next to a small group of women today, when I overheard one of them say: “Of course, he is a member of Mensa.....” The others widened their eyes in admiration, and started nodding their heads solemnly.

I used to work with a couple of men who also claimed to be members of Mensa. This fact was usually uttered in reverential voices by co-workers, and people were always embarrassed to be caught doing the Sun crossword if they were around. However, I am always suspicious when I hear of someone belonging to Mensa. It seems as if they are trying to show off, but at the same time, it smacks of chippiness. One the one hand, they are saying:

‘I belong to Clever Club’

but on the other, they are saying:

‘I need something to show how clever I am, otherwise no-one is ever going to know.’

A quick look at a few Mensa websites reveals that membership can be a whole lifestyle choice. You can buy Mensa tea to put in your Mensa mug, to remind people of your intelligence, either at home or at work. You can go on holiday with the Mensa Travel Club, which sounds a bit exhausting – not just one know-it-all in the group. (Maybe the final evening sing-song in the bar is in Latin). There is even a ‘G & T advice leaflet’ which, rather disappointingly turns out to be support for Gifted and Talented children, rather than how to mix a decent pre-dinner drink.

Talking of which, I am drinking Tesco Finest Howcroft Estate Merlot (down from £7.99 to £3.99 until 15/5) and letting its rich, mellow flavour wash over me. I like Merlot, despite the bad press it received in the film 'Sideways' (great film though).

I suppose in the climate of universal dumbing down, I should not be sniping, but applauding the fact that organisations like Mensa do exist. If anything, they are likely to become even more popular as people seem to be constantly seeking a competitive advantage. If there was a Mensa for babies, then I suspect it would be overwhelmed with applications from crazed, ambitious parents, desperate for their children to be classified as Gifted and Talented.

Interestingly, the membership of Mensa is 65% male and 35% female. So I suppose the women should just get back into the kitchen (without their shoes), and make a cup of Mensa tea for the chaps then.

I think I had better pour another glass of Merlot.

By the way, before I forget, the Tesco Wine Festival finishes on 15^th May. There are some fantastic bargains, including lots of excellent wines that are half price (in my book that means you can drink twice as much). Get down there before Tuesday and fill your boots!

Faking It

2007-05-09T20:00:00.000+01:00

I could not resist any longer, and now my recklessness has come back to haunt me.

I am not talking about an extra-marital affair here. I am talking about my inability to withstand the lure of the fake tan bottle. However, as with an extra-marital affair, I am left with a sense of guilt, disappointment, and a concern about how I am going to get the stains out.

Being the less-than-proud owner of very pale skin, I have always been fascinated with fake tan – but only on my legs. I am happy to ignore the obvious discrepancy between the colour of my legs and the rest of my body, and have always spent the summers looking like one of those children’s books where you flip the different parts of the head, body and legs to create a hybrid creature.

My love affair with fake tan started with the late Eighties arrival of the mighty (stinky) Duo Tan. The directions promised that after liberal application of this clear cream, I would wake up in the morning with beautiful bronzed legs. In fact, although my legs always did change colour (more ‘rust’ than ‘bronze’) this was eclipsed by the horror of looking at my bed sheets. I still remember the heated discussions with my mother that, no, I really didn’t need to take Immodium.

Then there was a craze for tanning tablets, which my mother forbade me from using (this from a woman who, in the post-War period, used to soak her own legs in cold tea). These tablets consisted mainly of beta-carotene and carrot powder, so you can imagine the resultant shade of ‘tan’ that they produced. I believe you can replicate this effect in your kids if you give them plenty of Sunny Delight to drink.

You would think that I would have seen enough fake tanning products to put me off for life. But no, like the gullible fool I am, I am always ready to try a new one. Of course, it always ends in tears. The initial rush of delight and euphoria quickly wears off, along with the tan.

To try and prove the triumph of optimism over experience, I have recently been experimenting with the much-lauded Johnson’s Holiday Skin. It all started off really well, and the last few days have seen me springing about with apparently sun-kissed limbs. But this morning I noticed pale streaks on my shins, and dark, dry patches on my battle-scarred knees. The overall effect suggested by the nicotine shade is that my legs have a forty a day habit.

I have a glass of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon (Tesco £5.48 down from £8.48 until 15/5), and as I am enjoying its slightly minty smoothness, I am stretching my blotchy legs out in front of me.

Presumably I will either have to wait for the fake tan to wear off, or scrub at my knees until I remove the top layer of skin. Or, I could do what I probably should have done in the first place, and just wear trousers.

Gardening Therapy

2007-05-08T19:33:00.000+01:00

The highlight of our Bank Holiday weekend (apart from the netball) was a mammoth gardening session. Now, my idea of gardening is to wander around in a floaty dress and big hat, humming Vivaldi and wielding a pair of tiny secateurs. A quick dead-heading of a rosebush here, the careful selection of a perfect bloom there, all laid across my trusty trug.

What we actually did was more akin to an Amazonian rainforest slash-and-burn. The garden is almost unrecognisable, and we appear to have nothing left in it that is actually growing.

I blame H (but then I always do!). In the Man versus Nature struggle, Man must conquer and subjugate. If the struggle was Woman versus Nature, we would probably come to some amicable agreement over a few glasses of wine – perhaps arrange a job-share or something.

I think the use of power tools is what attracts men to gardening. Who wouldn’t feel like a Master of the Universe with a hedge cutter in their hands? Well, me, actually. I always think I’m going to cut through the cable and electrocute myself.

I prefer the good old fashioned garden shears – the metallic slicing is so therapeutic. That busy, busy woman with the swinging ponytail, who blatantly queue-jumped in front of me yesterday, while she was yakking on her mobile? Snip! She won’t be so busy now she doesn’t have to put her hair up. That white van man who cut me up on the school run? Snip! He can yell abuse in a much higher voice now. Ah, the gentle joys of gardening.

Now that the weather is a bit colder, I am ready to hit the reds again, after my glut of whites and rosés. I am enjoying a glass of Château Saint Maurice Côtes Du Rhône (£5.49 Ocado - my auntie always used to call it Coat Jerome). It is quite spicy and tastes a little tannic, but that could just be that I am gulping it too fast.

I am looking grimly out of the window at the pile of chopped undergrowth which is still stacked up at the side of the garden. It will have to remain there until I can face bagging it all up and taking it to the dump. That is going to be a while. The last time I tried to force garden refuse into the council collection bags, I ended up looking as if I had spent my entire life self-harming, or wrestling with cats.

Long Tall Sally

2007-05-04T20:16:00.000+01:00

There were two very tall girls in my class at school. They were always on the back row of the school photos, slightly round-shouldered and stooping, as if to try and apologise for the extra space they were taking up in the world. When we all got to our early teens, and boys became a huge feature in our lives, their height became even more of a problem, despite the fact that they were both pretty. Most males in their early teens still look like little boys, albeit a bit spotty, but the tall girls looked like fully grown women.

No teenage boy wants to look like he is slow-dancing with his mother, so at the school discos the tall girls never experienced the thrill of the ‘last dance’ gropefest. For them, there was no opportunity to inhale at close quarters the hormone riddled essence of pubescent boy. They were strangers to the sound of grinding tooth enamel resonating through the skull, and the feel of an alien tongue writhing like a fat maggot in the mouth.

I often think about the tall girls, and wonder if they made up for lost time when they were in their twenties, and all the boys had finally caught up in height with them. Maybe they eventually got to wear the slinky high heels we all coveted, instead of being confined to the calf-widening effect of flatties. Did they recover from being marked out at such a young age? Did they go on to revel in their physical superiority?

I suppose I also think about the tall girls because I see my daughter developing into one right before my eyes. Currently she sees her height as a source of pride, as it gives her a big advantage at sport, but I worry for her teenage years, when the boys who are her age will be about the same height as her navel.

It is hard to find tall female role models that are not anorexic clothes horses, but I think we have found the answer. Since netball is her current passion, we are off to a Super League match this weekend. Forget the school netball days of sweaty airtex and corned beef legs, these women are lycra-clad goddesses, all young, lean limbed and athletic. Here the amazon is queen - I don’t think there is a player under five foot ten.

They sometimes televise these matches on Sky Sports, so you may see us in the crowd (I am the one with the hip flask).

Tonight, though, I am getting stuck into a Hardy’s Crest Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay (was £9.99, down to £4.99 at Tesco until 15/5 – you really can’t go wrong) as recommended by my mate Dulwich Mum. Like her, it is smooth, classy, and a little bit fruity. Unlike her, it is cheap, easily available, and has a hint of yeast.

I suppose from my daughter’s point of view, there will be some huge advantages to being tall. She will probably look old enough to get into clubs when she is fourteen, get served with alcopops when she is fifteen, and snog fully grown men when she is sixteen. Maybe I need to go easy on the confidence boosting talk about her height.

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend!

Worth The Wait-ing List

2007-05-03T20:40:00.000+01:00

Am I the only woman in the western world who owns just the one handbag? I think mine was fashionable round about 2003, when I bought it. Since then, it has steadily amassed so much crap that I think if I were to decide to clean it out, I would need to enlist the services of Rentokil, just to be on the safe side. Needless to say it is the size of a small suitcase, and weighs as much as my left leg. The muscles I have had to develop in my neck and back in order to keep it on my shoulder, have left me with an uncanny resemblance to Quasimodo. Since I appear to be going deaf as I get older, I may as well just get the eye patch, and then the transformation will be complete.

A friend of mine has several dinky little bags to match her several dinky little outfits. My bag is brown, therefore it already matches all my clothes – although the effect is not quite the same.

I have never quite understood why some people are prepared to go on a waiting list in order to buy a handbag. Is it really that mortifying just to choose a bag that is actually for sale in the shops? Yet again, I am probably missing something here. Whereas waiting lists seem to increase some people’s desire for certain things, I find that they have exactly the opposite effect on me. I remember a time last year when a mother urged me to put my children’s names down on a waiting list at a local tennis club. I knew there were other places they could learn to play tennis, should they wish to do so, so I asked her why I should bother with one where there was a waiting list, of nearly five years (apparently). “It’s for the discos” she hissed, “The social side is very good for teenagers!” What? Sign your children up for a sport which they may not be interested in, just so they can snog the ‘right sort of people’ when they hit the teenage years? Apart from the golf club style snobbery, this plan is so obviously flawed, that I cannot believe all these parents are following it so slavishly. Surely everyone remembers the horror and embarrassment of being asked to “be nice to” the gawky teenage son of their mother’s friend? Just imagine being forced to go to a disco where all the totty had been hand-picked by your mother? I have told H that if I ever try and do that to our kids, then he has full licence to smother me with a pillow. Although maybe I ought to retract that, as he probably doesn’t need much encouragement to wilfully misinterpret the pre-requisites.

I am drinking a Nepenthe Sauvignon Blanc (£7.99 Ocado) which is crisp, but not too sharp, in the way that some sauvignon blanc can be. It is a Drunk Mummy favourite.

I can remember, in the Eighties, there were waiting lists for the cleverly marketed and much-hyped Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc. Unsurprisingly, I was never on such a list, but I do remember being given a glass by someone who had been. With his newly-acquired status as one of the chosen few, he poured it out with the sort of reverence normally reserved for religious rituals. I think I must have failed to give it due veneration (probably necked it too fast) because I was not offered a second glass. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think I belched.

Tea For Twenty Two

2007-05-02T19:27:00.000+01:00

I went to a coffee morning today, after school drop off. It was in a spectacular house – straight out of the pages of ‘Homes and Gardens’. I have recently decided to stop regaling H about the neo-palaces that some of the people around here inhabit, as I don’t want him to think I am indirectly criticising his role as provider. It has also taken me some time to realise that not everyone lives in a house like this – just the people who host the coffee mornings. They are probably forced into it by the class rep, and must spend the whole time feeling like they are under scrutiny about everything from their choice of scatter cushions, to whether or not they’ve bought the right bread maker.

The hostess had provided a range of beautiful pastries, and someone had brought along home-made brownies. Of course, no-one actually ate anything. Instead there were several requests for bizarre tea concoctions (‘Got any nettle and echinacea?’) and at least three people had brought their own soya milk. Not because they are allergic to cows milk, you understand, but because it gave them something to talk about.

The gathering ended with the usual awkward requests from the class rep, asking us all to donate time/money/raffle prizes for a Summer Fair. This is so we can further line the coffers of a school that we already pay handsomely for our children to attend. I suppose I could have just taken a stand and said no, but I like the class rep, and wouldn’t wish her thankless job on my worst enemy. When I looked at the list of suggested raffle prizes I nearly fell over. If I was in a position to buy tickets to a major sporting event, or an iPod nano, or Nintendo Wii, then I certainly wouldn’t be donating them to a raffle. I scanned the list, thinking there might be something I could donate from the Drunk Mummy wine vaults (actually, it’s a cupboard under the stairs). No luck. Just a request for ‘cases of champagne’ – note the plural there. I guess a bottle of Blue Nun really isn’t going to cut the mustard then.

I certainly won’t be donating any of this delicious pink (despite the name) White Grenache from Ernest and Julio Gallo (Tesco £5.18) as recommended by Mutterings and Meanderings – I shall keep its fresh berry flavours for myself and H, to while away these warm summer evenings.

M'aidez!

2007-05-01T20:07:00.000+01:00

I’ve been feeling a bit subdued today. It seems such a long time ago that I was able to party like a demon, fuelled only by cheap fizz and a bag of crisps. A couple of hours of frantic fumbling on a lumpy futon, then I was up, fresh-faced and ready for a full day’s work.

Last night I sat at a restaurant table all evening, eating a delicious Lebanese meal and drinking wine in a very civilised manner. I was home by midnight, did not indulge in any bedroom gymnastics, and slept soundly in a comfy bed.

So how come my face looks like it needs a good ironing?

I don’t often go out midweek (or at weekends for that matter), and now I know why. It seems that unless I get at least eight hours sleep, I can’t function properly. Maybe my body is still trying to rectify the sleep deficit I incurred when the kids were babies. I know for a fact that my jaw hasn’t recovered properly from that time. I did so much yawning in those days, that I nearly dislocated it, and it still has a tendency to “click out” if I am chewing a particularly combative piece of toffee.

I suppose feeling knackered is a small price to pay for attending the Wine Dinner last night, where all the wines were from Chateau Musar in the Lebanon. They are very interesting wines, and the story of producing them in a war zone is fascinating. There were several reds of varying vintages, all remarkably different in character (I thought the Chateau Musar 2000 was outstanding). There was also a white, which was so unusual that it almost tasted like a red. We started, though, with a rosé which was unlike any rosé I’ve ever tasted. Despite the sugary promise of its pale salmon pink colour, it was bone dry, like a fino sherry. It was a bit like taking a sip of what you think is lemonade, only to find out that it’s tonic water – not unpleasant, just unexpected (although I suppose I would be pretty hacked off if someone replaced my G&T with a lemonade).

You can buy Chateau Musar 1999 at Ocado for £13.99, and Majestic for £14.99, but the 2000 is not being released until the end of May. I am SO ahead of the game! I suppose it’s a bit sad that the only thing of which I can claim to have my “finger on the pulse” is Lebanese wine, but never mind. I suppose I should be grateful that I can still feel a pulse.

Get A (Second) Life

2007-04-30T18:32:00.000+01:00

I was out in the world of the grown-ups this weekend. H and I went to a friend’s house for a lovely meal, with excellent wines. I didn’t drink too much – well, at least I was still able to stand unaided by the time we left.

Half way through the evening, the conversation turned to the subject of Second Life, and the whole idea of synthetic worlds. It took me a while to realise that synthetic worlds had nothing to do with crackly bri-nylon sheets. I am familiar with Animal Crossing because the kids play it. They talk casually to each other about “working for Tom Nook to pay off the mortgage” (I now know that Tom Nook is a raccoon, not a pimp, which was my initial hysterical response). Like the fossil that I am, I knew very little about Second Life, and in all honesty, I wasn’t that interested. Then someone mentioned in passing that your avatar could buy its own genitalia. From that point on, I was intrigued and appalled in equal measures. How would you go about such a transaction? Where would you go to buy them? Would you get to try them on? Would they stock the men’s in any size other than Large, Extra Large and Ewan McGregor? I was fascinated, embarrassingly so, and kept returning to the subject, long after the conversation had moved on.

According to my friend (who was suspiciously knowledgeable on the subject) everyone in Second Life is young, good-looking, with well-honed bodies and perfect teeth. I think it would be tempting to go there just to create a fat, ugly, middle-aged avatar that could spoil the party for the Beautiful People.

We are out again tonight (gasp!). I know it’s a Monday night, but, hey! Sometimes you’ve just got to throw caution to the wind! It’s another Wine Dinner, and this time all the wines are from the Lebanon – should be interesting. Apparently there is some food too.

H has already requested that I “leave the genitalia out of it” tonight, but I’m not sure whether that’s because he thinks such subjects are not suitable for public discussion, or whether he’s just embarrassed that I had never heard of Second Life before.

Do I Look Phat In These Jeans?

2007-04-27T20:09:00.000+01:00

Just before we left for school this morning, I reminded my youngest that he was due to have a little friend over for tea. He went into a mild panic, and appeared to start tidying his bedroom. By the time I had scooped my lower jaw off the carpet, I realised that he wasn’t actually tidying, but feverishly hiding anything that might be considered ‘babyish.’ Teddies, Thomas stuff, and any vaguely ‘pre-school’ toys were dispatched to the cupboard with a ruthless efficiency that would have made Alan Sugar uncomfortable.

This is not the first time that I have witnessed one of my children go through such a Judas-like betrayal of old favourites. Yet again, I had mixed feelings about it. Like most parents, I want my kids to have the courage to ‘be themselves’ but I know that like most children, they just want to fit in and be like everyone else. Still, I had to restrain the urge to throw thirty pieces of silver into his bedroom.

It seems that his classmates are very quick to castigate anyone who hasn’t moved on from one set of heavily marketed merchandise to the next. It’s dispiriting, but maybe it isn’t so different for adults. You only have to look at those misguided fashion-slaves whose stumpy legs were far better served by last year’s comfortable boot-cut jeans than this year’s skinny cropped ones. They have obviously had to ease them on with a warm spoon, but presumably their desire to fit in with the fashionable crowd is stronger than their desire to fit in their jeans.

I am breaking with a long standing Friday night tradition by not opening a bottle of prosecco. Instead, in homage to the balmy summer evening, I have a glass of La Gioisa Pinot Grigio Blush (£4.99 Tesco). It looks gorgeous, and tastes rather satisfyingly of strawberries.

I have something of a love-hate relationship with rosé wine. It frequently leaves me with a headache, but that may have something to do with drinking too much of it while sitting in the sunshine. I have fond memories of picnics in my late teens, when my friends and I would cool a bottle of Mateus Rosé in a nearby stream. I wonder if it has now become fashionably retro to have empty Mateus bottles as candle holders, dripping with melted wax. About twenty years ago, no self-respecting trattoria was seen without them.

As someone who appears more fat than Phat in her jeans, I am likely to be considered retro rather than cutting edge. Last week, I inadvertently referred to an ‘LP’ instead of a CD, in front of some Bright Young Things, causing gales of mirth, and instantly reducing my status to that of dinosaur. I should have added that if we put the wireless on, we could listen to the Hit Parade.

Babysitter Blues

2007-04-26T20:38:00.000+01:00

When our kids were very small, H and I hardly ever went out in the evenings. There were good reasons for this – mostly to do with chronic fatigue, but also because going out seemed to require mammoth organisational effort. Quite frankly, there was nothing I wanted to do enough, to make it worth the hassle. Instead it was considered a romantic Saturday night if I managed to stay awake for at least half an hour after finishing the Chinese takeaway.

Like many families, we live a long way away from our relatives, and we were also unduly fretful about leaving our small children with someone they didn’t know. As a result, we either went out separately, or if the occasion demanded that we had to attend together, we would get a grandparent to come over and stay for a few days. Facing my mother-in-law at 1am with a skinful is almost as bad as facing her at 8am with the hangover from hell. Maybe not.

H used to say that it was “better a strange relative than a relative stranger” when it came to babysitting, but I think that was before he realised quite how strange some of my family were. We eventually graduated onto a very competent babysitter, who was a trained nanny, and coped with the kids better than I did.

The reason I am remembering all this is because I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time today trying to find a babysitter for this weekend. Whereas in the past, all candidates had to be checked by Interpol, my requirements have slackened alarmingly in a very short space of time. So, the qualified thirty-something nanny can’t make it? How about her twenty-something younger sister who helps out with the brownie pack? No, well what about her 18 year old friend, who likes kids, and only smokes the occasional joint? Busy, OK, what about her 15 year old smackhead brother, who is awaiting his court appearance for arson? He’s free! Great, send him round! The kids have been waiting for someone to play with the Chemistry Set!

I can’t seem to kick my Chablis habit at the moment. I’m drinking some Marks and Spencer Chablis, but I’ve no idea how much it costs, since the bottle was a gift from a friend. I’m not sure I like it quite as much as the Tesco Finest Chablis, but that’s not going to stop me putting a few glasses of it down my neck.

I still don’t have a babysitter for Saturday, so instead of going to the glamorous grown-up dinner party, it looks like we’ll be back to the days of the living room sofa and the Chinese takeaway. At least I can guarantee that I’ll be drinking a wine I like.

Falling Between Two Stools

2007-04-25T20:24:00.000+01:00

Do you ever get the feeling that you are being subject to the dark arts of the marketing demographics men? That faint paranoia when you receive special offer coupons for a product you bought only once, over a year ago, or online recommendations for items “you might also like...” I find that unsettling, but I can’t work out if I’m uneasy because I think my actions are being observed, or if it’s just my ‘inner git’ which dislikes being categorised.

When I am slobbing in front of the television, if the adverts during the breaks are all for Clearasil or Heat magazine, then I begin to suspect I should be watching something more edifying. Conversely, if they are about equity release mortgages or health insurance, I reckon I have gone too far the other way, and need to lighten up a bit. If the ads are for chocolate, or cat food, then I know there is no point trying to discuss the programme the following day with any male friends.

On other occasions, I have the opposite problem, when it seems like I am in no-woman’s land in marketing terms. If I read ‘chick lit’ I’ve started to feel like the sixth form prefect supervising the spirited, younger girls - I can remember what it’s like to be discovering sex and fashion, but it would be embarrassing to join in the conversation. The more chronologically advanced ‘hen lit’ seems to be full of miserable elderly relatives, stroppy older kids (I’m only familiar with the junior version), but worst of all, heroes in ‘crisp linen shirts’. I’m just not ready to start fantasising about a man in a crisp linen shirt – the image is too clean, safe and predictable. Maybe the average hen lit reader looks across at her nose-picking, stained-vest-wearing husband and dreams about men in crisp linen shirts. Perhaps I am just heading towards an age where the greatest indicator of a person’s suitability for steamy sex is supposed to be their personal hygiene, or their choice of smart leisure wear. Alan Titchmarsh anyone?

Before it all gets too depressing, I am finishing up the remains of last night’s Chablis.
I reckon that with women’s fiction, I am ‘falling between two stools’ - and I’ve certainly done enough of that in my time. It seems that I must identify with either the sassy, young girl-about-town who gets it on with her rugged alpha boss between shopping sprees; or the brittle, well-preserved forty-something in her gilded cage, whose desires are awakened by the sensible, clean chap who likes children.
I think I need the wine goggles.

When I Grow Up

2007-04-24T20:21:00.000+01:00

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” There were many times in my life when that was a burning question. I frequently fantasised about that longed-for day when I could emerge from the grey torpor of school and the parental chrysalis, and spread my wings into the technicolour freedom promised by the world of work.

However, at no point in my varied working life have I ever been an air hostess, hairdresser, doctor (that one was to please my Mum), actress, ballerina, or any of the myriad exciting careers that were my childhood ambitions. Indeed the list of tedious jobs that actually have filled my adult life would have made my childhood self either laugh, or refuse to go on, due to the obvious dullness of it all.

I have always envied people who have had the certainty of knowing exactly what it is they want to do with their lives from a very young age, and then actually doing it. It seems to show an admirable sense of purpose. I wonder how many teachers, firemen and nurses are fulfilling their childhood dreams? Probably a lot more than the accountants and lawyers, although I daresay the latter are more likely to fulfil their childhood dreams of owning a Ferrari.

One of my kids wants to drive their own ice cream van, and I can see why that would appeal. Another wants to be a taxi driver, but that’s probably because he thinks it’s what I already do, and he rather likes the idea of a family business. It seems that no-one wants to be a policeman any more (too dangerous), or soldier (likewise, unless you want a book deal), or cowboy (condemned for harassing the indigenous population). The power of television in our lives has meant that the ‘glamorous’ jobs from a child’s point of view are presenting programmes, playing football, or singing.

Actually, I ought to confess that the one childhood ambition I have never been able to shake off is to be a singer, even though, like most people, I have absolutely no talent for it.

I am humming now, as I sip this glass of crisp Tesco Finest Chablis from the stockpile (now at £5.49 from £7.99 until 15/05 – hurry Dulwich Mum!). No doubt, when I open the fridge door for a refill, there will be enough of a spotlight to justify me bursting fully into song.

I Scream, You Scream

2007-04-23T20:02:00.000+01:00

Back to reality after our seaside idyll – with manky hairbrush and underwear well hidden in the bottom of my bag.
As always, the beaches of South Wales did not disappoint. There was only one slightly tense moment when my luminous blue-white legs emerged from their protective covering, causing bronzed locals to avert their eyes in embarrassment, and hiss urgently at their children not to stare at the poor lady. The sea at this time of year is cold, very cold, but being British it was only natural that we should want to submerge our pasty bodies in it. Of course, the kids were all decked out in several inches of state-of-the-art neoprene, so not only did they look stylish, but they were also relatively inured to the arctic temperatures. I was wearing a baggy lycra swimsuit, which might as well have been knitted, for all the thermal protection it gave me. It took me ten minutes of girly squealing to achieve full body immersion, and I would say that it was worth ten weeks of concerted pelvic-floor exercises. Unfortunately though, it was some time before that pinched, concentrated stare of the ‘secret pelvic-floor clencher’ began to dissipate.
After we had all leapt about like salmon for half an hour, I finally persuaded the kids to get out by bribing them, bizarrely, with an ice cream – although chicken soup and hot sweet tea might have been more appropriate in the circumstances.
In the same way that banging your head against a wall feels great when you finally stop (or so I’m hoping, with this child-rearing lark), when I finally emerged from the icy depths, looking more Honey Monster than Honey Ryder, my skin felt like it was burning in the comparative heat of the air. A brisk rub down with a sand-encrusted towel was a more effective exfoliator than any salon treatment, and totally painless at the time, due to the anaesthetic effects of the Atlantic. I’m sure it won’t be too long before the skin on my upper arms heals properly.

Although I was disappointed that I didn’t even get close to trying any of the Welsh Cariad wine, I am very excited by the prospect of drinking this glass of Barramundi Semillon Chardonnay as recommended by The Grocer (£4.79 Ocado, or go to The Grocer’s shop!).
It tastes of melon and citrus fruit, and makes me long to dabble my toes in tropical waters.
I seem to remember that about ten years ago, this wine used to be sold in a brightly labelled bottle. If so, it has had something of a sophisticated make-over (I could do with one of those myself), but the label still suggests warm, sandy, Australian beaches.
Maybe Cariad wines could do a similar tie-in with the beaches of South Wales - the wine label could include pictures of sand, surf, baggy lycra and mottled blue legs.

There's Lovely

2007-04-20T15:04:00.000+01:00

We are off to the most gorgeous part of South Wales for the weekend. If the nice weather holds, the kids will spend the whole time frolicking on the beach, splashing in the sea, peering expectantly into rock pools and terrorising starfish. We can eat cockles, fish and chips and ice cream. Heaven!
This is where H grew up, spending his formative years like a young Ray Mears - camping, canoeing and generally boy scouting for all he was worth. As a result, he is fairly impervious to the beautiful surroundings, whereas I, with the romantic perspective of the outsider, am totally besotted with the place.
I do have to enter a seaside Faustian pact, though. When we visit, we stay at my mother-in-law’s house. Now, as tangled mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships go, I have been let off pretty lightly - you do hear some real horror stories. My mother-in-law cannot do enough for us, but at the risk of sounding churlish, that is exactly the problem.
As an ex-nurse, she is one of the least squeamish people I know. She thinks nothing of removing the manky pelt of matted hair that clings to the bristles of my hairbrush. I have never actually seen her do this; I just spend ages looking for the brush, which is of course, totally unrecognisable when it’s hair-free. My toes still curl at the memory of the time we spent a week at her house, and she kindly offered to do some washing for me. I placed the bundle of ‘whites’ in the washing machine, only to return later and find her washing all my knickers by hand.
There is a Welsh wine called ‘Cariad’ (meaning love, aaaah!) but I’ve only ever bought it in Wales. The white was a little sweet for my liking, but I think they do a rosé which would be worth trying in the warm weather – I’ll let you know if I get my hot little hands on any.

Holiday Haircuts

2007-04-19T19:52:00.000+01:00

I took the boys to get their hair cut today. I say cut, but it looks more like a marine jarhead shave. The place we go to is an old fashioned barber’s shop, complete with stripy pole outside and Brylcreem smell inside. The boys have loved going there since they were tiny. It could be the 1970s Technicolour photos of chisel-cheeked heroes on the walls (no ornately coiffed boy bands here) that they like. It could be the good-natured, efficient chaps who wield their shiny scissors with such dexterity. It definitely has something to do with the lollipop they get at the end. But most of all, I think it is just that the whole place is steeped in an atmosphere of benevolent ‘blokeishness’ that you really don’t find anywhere else.
The boys always have their hair cut as short as possible. It cuts down time spent on hair washing and drying, stops them from catching the head lice that their schoolmates are always generously donating to others, and lends them an air of menace. They climb into the barber’s chair with hair that is already shorter than the boy who has just vacated it, and after five minutes with the electric shaver (1 at the back, 2 at the sides, 3 on the top), they emerge looking like rather intimidating newly-shorn sheep.
The reaction of other parents to this extreme haircut is usually mixed. Dads frequently run their hands across the boys’ suede heads and smile nostalgically. Some Mums however, obviously find the whole ‘ASBO chic’ thing a bit too much to bear, and laugh nervously as they manoeuvre their ringletted children away to a safe distance.
We are having fish and asparagus tonight, so I have already uncorked some Gavi La Madonnina Araldica (£6.99 Ocado) which I have mentioned before, as it is a firm favourite of mine. Hopefully there will be some left by the time we sit down to eat.
I realise that, as with all parental decisions, I am probably storing up trouble for myself in the future by having the boys’ hair so short. I can see that the moment they are able to choose their own hair length, they will opt for the full Johnny Depp, and I won’t have any say in it at all. But then, since I won’t have to wash it, dry it, or pull nits out of it, I doubt I will care that much either.

Catalogue of Misery

2007-04-18T20:33:00.000+01:00

The thud of slippery plastic bags onto my doormat this morning heralded the arrival of (yet another) clutch of catalogues. Or should the collective noun be ‘an envy’ of catalogues, or ‘an over-spend.’
In catalogue-land there are no longer only four seasons – more like eight. They include such periods as ‘early Spring,’ ‘late Spring’ and ‘deep mid-Winter.’ The inference being that I need to reassess the state of my plastic bowls, doormats and towels according to the weather conditions.
Sadly, I am incapable of throwing these catalogues away without at least a cursory flick through. Perhaps subconsciously, I think I am about to discover the one item that will deliver the Holy Grail of a well-ordered home. Instead, I am just left with the vague awareness that nothing in my house either matches or co-ordinates with anything else. Unless you include the contents of the wine rack.
Therefore, I really should have known better than to look inside the latest offering from “The Sleepover Company” which sells everything you supposedly need in order to have another child stay at your house for the night. If ever there was a publication designed to up the ante on competitive parenting, this is it. My eldest is only just dipping her toe into the sleepless world of the sleepover, yet it’s easy to see the inevitable slide into full body immersion. On the rare occasions that I had a friend over to stay when I was young, it merely involved pulling a mouldy sleeping bag out of the loft, and going to sleep on the floor. According to “The Sleepover Company” not only should you completely re-decorate your child’s room with a stowaway bed and matching furniture, but you will need to install a trampoline and outdoor activity centre in your garden. They even sell stripy ‘Popcorn bags’ for the little emperors and empresses to hold (or maybe hook over their ears), while they sit in front of your 40 inch wall-mounted home cinema system.
I am drinking a soft, vanilla-like Patache Médoc Cabernet Sauvignon (£5.99 down from £7.99 until 6/05 at Ocado) and realising that, if I’m being honest, I am against sleepovers for two reasons. Firstly, the ‘away fixture’ requires me to stay off the vino in case I am needed to pick up my blubbing child at 2am. Secondly, the ‘home fixture’ requires me to stay off the vino in case I have to console someone else’s blubbing child at 2am. That looks like a Lose-Lose situation to me.

Mirror, Mirror On the Table

2007-04-17T20:41:00.000+01:00

When I was a teenager, my friends and I used to place a mirror on a flat surface, position our faces directly over the top, and look down. Amid shrieks of horrified laughter, we told each other that this was how we would look when we were forty (gasp!). Of course, with typical youthful arrogance, we didn’t believe we would ever get that old, and certainly not that hideous. Ah, well.....
I was reminded of this game when H and I were at a friend’s house for dinner this weekend. It was all very pleasant, until we sat down at the stylishly set dinner table, where the hostess, in her skeletal wisdom had decided that ‘mirrored place mats’ were a good idea. Every time I looked down, I thought there was a shar pei puppy under the table trying to eat my food - it was extremely disconcerting. I suppose if you extend the idea of the teenage mirror game, then this is how I will look when I am eighty (as if I will ever get that old or that hideous!).
Helping me to forget that troubling image, is a glass of Pimm’s – just with lemonade and ice, since we haven’t got the strawberries/orange/cucumber/mint/borage/cabbage or whatever you are supposed to put in it these days. It’s a shame really, because if we did, there would be enough food in the one glass to call it a decent enough meal, and I wouldn’t have to bother cooking tonight.
Maybe I could just pour myself another Pimm’s and spoon a few baked beans into the glass.......

"I'm not (even) fat, I'm pregnant"

2007-04-16T19:54:00.000+01:00

There must be thousands of pregnant women who are looking at the pictures of Gap’s new maternity range, featuring Eva Herzigova’s stretch mark-free ‘bump’, and weeping into their lycra tummy panels. Herzigova (she of the talking tits) is apparently 7 months pregnant, with what I can only presume is a hamster. She proudly displays her gently rounded stomach, which looks look like an over-indulgence on a Chinese takeaway meal, rather than an actual pregnancy. It makes you want to yell “Go on Eva, one burp and it’s gone.”
Of course, I am just plain envious. When I was pregnant I resembled a ship in full sail from about 5 months onwards – I even put weight on my feet. My heart goes out to all the poor souls out there in the latter stages of pregnancy, whose only relief in this hot weather is to ease their massive bulk into the kiddies’ paddling pool and be sprayed with a garden hose.
According to The Sunday Times, Eva is not worried about getting ‘back into shape’ after the birth (yeah, I bet). I always said I wasn’t worried about getting my body back after pregnancy either – I would much rather have got someone else’s instead. Sadly, I had to settle for my own, but with the added bonus of a stomach that had so many folds, I could have put a drawstring through and made a really useful duffle bag.

A glass of slightly smoky La Grille Chenin Blanc (£5.99 – down from £7.99, Ocado) is helping me see a small chink in Herzigova’s gushing mother-to-be perfection.
She reveals, mischievously, that she has developed an unfamiliar liking for sweet things, especially chocolate. Well, that’s not going to go away. I give her a year before she is gobbling leftover biscuits, and surreptitiously licking the insides of empty chocolate mousse pots.

Oysters

2007-04-13T20:05:00.000+01:00

There comes a time in every school holiday when the kids have finally tired of Olympic-level bickering, eating playdough, and watching wall-to-wall cartoons (okay, maybe not the last one). That’s when they turn to the tower of stuff hidden at the back of the cupboard, which can be loosely termed ‘craft kits.’
These are all birthday gifts from schoolfriends, whose mothers enjoy the warm glow associated with giving a present that is both educational and creative. What these mothers have always failed to do is enclose their Filipina maid for half a day to help make the wretched thing.
My daughter has a vast collection of these unopened kits, ranging from plate-painting, T-shirt tie-dying, crystal growing, snow-dome creating, and various knitting and sewing packs. Using my finely-honed procrastination skills, I have always convinced her that she needs to do these kits on a day that ‘we’ have more free time.
Today I was finally forced to stop running. She produced a kit (where you create little fabric toys which attach to a keychain), and set about it with gusto. Less that two minutes in, she was, understandably, having trouble threading the needle. Ten minutes later, despite heaps of encouragement, she was seething with frustration. We eventually spent all morning stitching together a shiny green ‘oyster keychain buddy.’
Now, I am not the world’s greatest needlewoman, and the resultant oyster looks like it owes its heritage to Dr Frankenstein, rather than the shores of Brittany, but she seems delighted with it.
I think my (very domestic) mother-in-law realised I was going to be a huge disappointment to her, when her masterclass on ‘how to put a duvet into its cover correctly’ failed to elicit the expected grateful response from me. Although I am rather scathing of Grandma’s obsession with domestic trivia, I have to agree that her sewing skills would have come in very handy today.
In a futile attempt to avoid gender-stereotyping the boys, I invited them to make an oyster too. Thankfully they preferred to run up and down the garden non-stop, which required no parental involvement whatsoever. They also managed to produce their very own 'Dockyard oysters' as a result.
Given that it is Friday night, I should be popping open the prosecco. However, courtesy of a recommendation from Stay At Home Dad I have a glass of Waitrose Pfalz Riesling (£4.99) in front of me. It is, as he describes, both fruity and dry, and it will go extremely well with tonight’s curry. However, I’m not at all convinced by his argument that its intensity means that you drink less of it. Thanks SAHD! If anyone else wants to recommend their favourite wine for under a tenner, I would be delighted to give it a go.

Colour Me Beautiful

2007-04-12T19:45:00.000+01:00

I’ve been skipping about with a spring in my step today! My newly-painted toes are now a summery shade of coral, or, as the nail polish manufacturer would have me believe – ‘Feisty.’
Feisty? The only time I’m feisty is if someone at a party says to me “I think you may have had enough to drink already.” Who thinks up these bizarre names for colours?
A quick sift through my battered nail polish collection reveals a pale pink ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (totally congealed, needless to say) and a rather aspirational ‘Sophisticated Lady.’ Most of the names have no relation whatsoever to the colour of the polish. Why is ‘Pashmina’ a light plum colour? Judging by my school run it could be any one of at least thirty shades.
Maybe Farrow and Ball should bring out a range of nail colours. They could have names like ‘Cartland’s Pink,’ a romantic magenta, ‘Varicose Vein’ a delicate purple shade, and ‘Dandruff’ the classic neutral tone.
The warm weather has got me on a bit of a Chardonnay kick at the moment, so I am drinking a glass of creamy Tesco Finest Oak Aged White Burgundy (on offer at £3.99 down from £6.99, Hurry, hurry!) and getting ready to settle down with the last few chapters of Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach.’ I have been trying to sneak a peek all day, as I am tantalisingly close to the end. Instead, I was embroiled in endless tedious arguments with the kids about tidying up the hordes of Action Man and Bratz toys. I did notice that a couple of the nose-less, midriff-baring Bratz (or Slutz as they are known in our house) have painted nails – in shades of ‘Jailbait Jewel’ and ‘Lilac Lolita.’

Twinkle Toes

2007-04-11T19:36:00.000+01:00

I was sitting in the garden with the kids this afternoon, enjoying a picnic. Before you picture one of those ‘lifestyle’ catalogue scenarios where we are all dressed in white cotton, and eating home made quiche off Cath Kidston plates, I ought to qualify the term ‘picnic.’ The food consisted of a couple of mouldy cheese sandwiches and a few bags of crisps, with a carton of tartrazine-rich orange drink each. The defining factor, though, was that we were sitting on an outdoor rug. Therefore, we were technically having a picnic. I have recently made the seismic shift into flip-flops on account of the lovely weather, so I stretched my legs out on the rug towards my son. The expression on his face can only be described as abject revulsion, as he regarded my newly-emancipated toes. At first, I thought it could just be an understandable reaction to the cheese sandwiches, but no, apparently the taste of mouldy cheese was nothing compared to the sight of my hooves. Eventually, he cleared his throat and asked me in his most polite voice if I would mind moving my feet away from him, as they were putting him off his food. I would like to be indignant about this, but unfortunately he does have a point - they do look rather reptilian. Therefore, I have decided to tackle my own pedicure tonight. For someone who used to be very high maintenance, this is a bitter pill to swallow. In a previous life, I had well-tended toes and luscious acrylic fingernails with tips so white they looked like they had been dipped in Tippex. They were absolutely rock hard, and if anyone needed to take a door off its hinges, I was the woman for the job. Sitting back in a comfy lounger every month, leafing idly through glossy magazines while someone made your fingers and toes pretty, was hard to beat. Ah, memories......
Anyway, I have a bottle of Mâcon-Villages Chardonnay (£4.99 Ocado) chilling in the fridge which is crisp, peachy and unoaked, and should keep me company tonight. H is out until late, which is good, since I reckon that the ‘secrets of the boudoir’ should remain just that. I’m not sure that watching someone clip their toenails is conducive to great marital relationships (but then neither are scaly feet). A home pedicure isn’t quite the pampering experience of a nail salon, but I can think of one advantage – I was never offered a glass of wine at the salon.

Photo Love

2007-04-10T20:07:00.000+01:00

We are back from our Easter break, which was great fun, involving a sort of ‘gathering of the clan’ with my brothers and their families. The strategy of hiding the Easter eggs on Saturday night worked well, although a couple of the sparkly wrappers proved irresistible to some local magpies. I just managed to prevent my youngest son from eating one egg that had acquired its own slug, but I doubt he would have noticed in the general chocolate feeding frenzy.
There is something about returning to the place in which you grew up that brings you down to earth with a bump. As the youngest in our family, I am always at a huge disadvantage in that all my brothers can remember every embarrassing episode from my formative years (and believe me, there were many). As if this wasn’t enough, my Dad’s house is bursting at the seams with photographic reminders of some hairstyles and outfits that can only be described as “experimental”. Here I am in one picture proudly sporting a brand new perm that makes me resemble a blonde Brian May from Queen. In another, I have a fringe that is so aggressively tong-ed that it looks as though a giant sausage roll is taped to my forehead. As the chronological freak show moves on, I am pictured in various sporting team photos – wearing full make up! In fact, plum eye shadow figured so strongly in my adolescence that I am surprised the social services were never called. Even in my twenties, at every family wedding or christening, I am clearly trying to compensate for something by wearing the biggest shoulder pads and largest hats I can find. Lastly, and most cruelly, are my wedding photos. It was only ten years ago, but for both H and I, the years have not been kind. At least they are only head shots, so the full extent of the decay is not immediately apparent. We look impossibly young and healthy in these pictures. For starters, we both had much more hair. Thankfully, after the birth of our daughter, we drop off my Dad’s photo montage completely, to be replaced by pictures of our kids, first as babies, now as children.
I am drinking a glass of Yalumba “Y” Viognier (£6.99 Ocado) which is a little bit sweet on its own but goes nicely with the supermarket Thai curry I will be ‘cooking’ tonight. I am trying to work out when my children are likely to start being embarrassed by the copious holiday photos we have of them messily devouring ice cream cornets. Judging by their mealtime this afternoon, which was more like feeding time at the zoo, that day is a long way off.

Would I Lie to You?

2007-04-05T21:04:00.000+01:00

I am off for the weekend to visit my family. The kids are excited at the prospect of the long journey, because we always stop at the motorway service station for a burger. Its not really the burger they want – just the plastic toy that comes with it. I keep suggesting to them that they would be better off eating the plastic toy, and playing with the food, but they will have none of it.
I am already developing an unhealthy level of anxiety about my role as The Easter Bunny on Sunday morning, when I will have to escape undetected into my Dad’s garden to hide some little Easter eggs for the kids to find. I have always insisted on scrupulous levels of honesty from my children, yet I continue to lie to them in the most bare-faced manner about the existence of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus. I know that any day now they are going to unmask me as the craven liar I really am, and I’m dreading it. As a result, like Madame Bovary, I have resorted to crafting an increasingly tangled web of deceit to cover my tracks. I am seriously considering doing the egg hiding on the Saturday night, when they are asleep, so I won’t be caught red-handed.
The risk is that one of the urban foxes will get to the choccies before the kids do, and I will be faced with explaining away the carnage of empty foil wrappers to my weeping children, who no doubt would be convinced that the Easter Bunny had been eaten along with the eggs.
On the other hand, my family are rather big drinkers (no surprise there) and my children very early risers, so in order to continue the deception, I will have to get up at the crack of dawn on Easter Sunday with a hangover. On that basis, the potential bunny-massacre scene is looking worth the risk – at least I won’t have to lie about it next year.
As I am savouring a glass of citrussy Nepenthe Sauvignon Blanc (£7.99 Ocado) I am beginning to see a form of salvation from my years of gratuitous fraud. How about telling my kids that the Tooth Fairy has retired to a ‘Sprightly Seniors’ Community’ where she operates a successful dental implant business? And Santa? Thanks to global warming and high cholesterol levels, he is now running a celebrity ‘fat camp’ at his golf and leisure complex in Marbella.
Happy Easter! I’ll be posting again when I’m back on Tuesday 10th.

Hear, hear!

2007-04-04T20:14:00.000+01:00

I took my son (not the grunting one) for a hearing test at the local hospital today. Of course, this meant dragging all three kids along with me. A couple of years ago, a visit like this would have caused teeth-clenching levels of stress, but courtesy of the electronic stun-guns known as Nintendo DS consoles, it all went very smoothly. Instead of them running around the crowded waiting room, or chewing on the grimy one-armed dolly from the toy basket, they had to be roused back into consciousness when my son’s name was called.
Before I had kids I had hardly ever stepped inside a hospital. After three pregnancies, involving excessive levels of medical poking and prodding, I have now got to the stage where every time I see someone in a white coat, I take my knickers off (always causes a bit of a stir at the butcher’s shop).
Anyway, with underwear intact, I explained to the nice doctor that we were here because my son’s teacher had expressed a small concern about his hearing, so I thought we had better get it checked. When he asked if I personally thought my son couldn’t hear properly, I had to restrain my initial response about ‘selective male hearing’, since I doubt he would have been impressed. Instead, I mumbled something about it being impossible to tell in our house, since everyone shouted all the time – he wasn’t impressed with that either.
Thankfully, my son’s hearing turned out to be fine after all, so I am popping the cork off a Marques de Monistrol Rosé Cava (£6.49 Ocado) by way of celebration. Its not at all bad for a cheap fizz, and its pink too! I will make a note to tell his teacher next term that there definitely isn’t anything wrong with his hearing – obviously she just isn’t shouting loudly enough.

Tic-king Off

2007-04-03T21:32:00.000+01:00

I was sprawling on the sofa, watching TV with the kids today, when I realised that the youngest was making a slight throat clearing/grunting noise every ten or so seconds. I surreptitiously checked he wasn’t choking, farting or being slowly asphyxiated by one of the others, then sat back again.
Now, I know all the child psychology Fuhrers tell you that you must ignore any nervous tics, or you risk making them worse, so I said nothing and sat there wondering how long he had been doing it – days, weeks, months? I had no idea – couldn’t remember it ever being quiet enough in the house to hear. After about another ten minutes I couldn’t stand it any more, and asked him gently if he was aware of the noise he was making.
“What noise?” he asked, turning his chin towards me, but with his gaze firmly locked onto the TV screen. I explained, doing a passable impersonation of the little grunt, but there was no glimmer of recognition, he just continued gawping at the screen – and continued grunting, only now every five seconds instead of ten. I was left pondering the prospect of his gradual slide into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and then a full blown case of Tourette’s Syndrome by the time he hits puberty. In the end, I had to leave the room to avoid gnawing on my own knuckles, or yelling “For God’s sake, just stop it!”
This is not new territory, so I shouldn’t really be worried. My older son went through a stage of gurning alarmingly, and also developed a ‘spinning around’ tic that would have put the Jackson Five to shame. At the time, I was convinced that it was a result of dosing him up with cetirizine for hayfever, but now I’m not so sure. It could just have been the stress he was under that year at his Alpha-child school. The tics would stop whenever he had a school holiday, and then gradually build up again as the term went on. He grew out of it eventually, but not before he had left me with a legacy of fretting silently about a possible return.
Therefore, I am tucking into a glass of crisp and tropical Jacob’s Creek Semillon Chardonnay (£5.49 Tesco) in an attempt to restore some common sense. I seem to remember having a similar irritating grunt pointed out to me by a school friend once, so maybe its genetic. I daresay that by the time the boys are teenagers, irritating grunts will be their sole method of communication.

Lady Mondegreen

2007-04-02T20:14:00.000+01:00

We were singing along to the radio in the car this morning when my daughter asked why Whitney Houston was ‘bending over’ in the song. It turns out that the song “I’m Every Woman” does indeed sound like Whitney is belting out “I’m bending over.” Given that the next line is “Its all in me” I may have to suggest that she sings the correct words, in order to avoid the rather pornographic imagery.
I am enjoying a leftover glass of lemony Gavi La Madonnina Araldica (£6.99 Ocado) and slowly realising that my daughter has inherited the family ‘mondegreen’ gene – the ability to mishear or reinterpret lyrics at will. I blame my own father, who wilfully sings the wrong lyrics to almost every song he knows. To this day, if I ever hear the opening line of the hymn “Holy holy holy” I want to add “Two full backs and a goalie.”
H is just as bad. Last year he bought me a Bee Gees compilation CD (don’t mock) called “Number Ones” (which does beg the question as to whether there will be a follow up CD called “Number Twos” – maybe not). I was singing away to “How Deep Is Your Love” and got to the line “When they all should let us be” when he stopped me and asked me to sing that bit again. He finally fessed up that he had always thought that line was “When they all showed letters B” – imagining holding up giant letter Bs in the manner of a presenter of pre-school TV. He still hasn’t recovered from the embarrassment.
When I was at school, you had to buy Smash Hits if you wanted to find out song lyrics. Now there is a whole rash of websites dedicated to them, so there is really no excuse any more for singing the wrong words – thus depriving a whole generation of school kids hours of sniggering fun. I recall giggling with my schoolmates at the Boney M song “Brown Girl in the Ring” and the line “Show me your motion” which we thought we had misheard – the original presumably being “Show me emotion”. Trawling the lyrics websites today I am astounded to realise that the correct words are in fact “Show me your motion.”
Boney M, what were you thinking?

Hurrah for the Hols!

2007-03-30T20:22:00.000+01:00

Last day of Spring term today. The boys are doing a cricket training course this Easter, so they will be able to emulate their England cricket heroes (presumably pedallos will be provided). The range of activities on offer to children over the holiday is jaw-dropping: horse riding, sailing, circus skills, lion taming for the under-fives....the list is endless. When I was a child my brothers and I had to make do in the holidays with watching black and white television re-runs of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Belle and Sebastian’. When the two hours of children’s TV finished, (I know its hard to imagine) we would amuse ourselves with marathon sessions of Monopoly and Cluedo. Were we bored? Well yes, hideously so, but when we moaned about it, no one paid any attention. My mother was as unlikely to ferry us around to ‘holiday activities’ as she was to pay someone to clean her house for her.
I was wondering if I could con my kids into an alternative range of Easter courses. How about:
Junior Horticulture (weeding the garden)
Life Laundry for Littlies (tidying their bedrooms)
Kitchen Skills for Young Chefs (making lunch)
Advanced Kitchen Skills for Young Chefs (making dinner).
I think I could be on to something here........Time to crack open the prosecco!

The Roadrunner

2007-03-29T20:16:00.000+01:00

I’ve had one of those days where I have gradually become irritated by the sound of my own nagging. Now the kids are all in bed, and I’m snuggling up to a large glass of soft, ripe Rosemount Pinot Noir (£7.99 Ocado), I’m feeling subdued and rather remorseful. Their view of me today has been:
7am- see crazed, wild-haired harpy descend on kitchen, chivvying everyone to hurry up and eat breakfast ‘faster’, go and brush teeth, get dressed ‘faster’, get schoolbags, go to the toilet, put shoes on ‘faster’, get in the car, put seatbelts on ‘faster’.
8.30 am – arrive at school for a calm, nurturing day, where no-one shouts ‘Shut up, I can’t hear myself think!’ or ‘You did that deliberately, didn’t you?’ Make lovely, arty things with tissue paper, sing jolly songs in little piping voices, write stories about fluffy animals, and generally express creativity in a multitude of ways.
3.30pm – meet up with crazed, wild-haired harpy, who constantly issues military-style commands to get in the car, put seatbelts on ‘faster’, get in the house, take shoes off, get out of school uniform ‘faster’, do homework, eat dinner ‘faster’, get in the bath, brush teeth, put pyjamas on ‘faster’.
Sitting here now with my glass of Pinot Noir, I’m not quite sure what all the rush was about.

You Lost Me At ‘Hello’

2007-03-28T19:50:00.000+01:00

I was watching my daughter play hockey this afternoon. If you could call it that. To the untrained eye, it looked like a dozen mini Grim Reapers, scything away at each other. For most watching parents it was an exercise in flinching, and fretting about likely dental bills. For those with private health insurance and the number of a good plastic surgeon, it offered the prospect of an early introduction to corrective rhinoplasty.
Halfway through the match, I noticed a rather good looking father arrive and join the opposition spectators. With an almost audible cinematic whoosh, I was transported back over twenty years, as I realised I knew this man from university days, knew him really well in fact (although not in the biblical sense). I went over, said his name, and gave him a hug. He was speechless, but that may be because I omitted to introduce myself, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember who I was. We talked for a few minutes about jobs, families, children, old friends, and gradually he made the connection with the person I was twenty years ago. As the second half of the hacking match started, I started to wind up the conversation, leaving him with the honest assurance that he “hadn’t changed a bit.” There was a dreadful, lengthy pause. Then in a manner worthy of Hugh Grant, he stuttered and said “Gosh” and “Well” several times, but couldn’t quite bring himself to return the compliment. I limped away.

Now I’m back in my kitchen, licking my wounds and the last of the Shiraz.
I’ve decided that the reason my old friend thought I had changed so much isn’t because two decades and three children have left me decayed and ravaged beyond recognition. No, I think he was shocked that I had morphed into a respectable mother with a ten year marriage and a cliché-ed hairstyle. The last time he had seen me, twenty years ago, I was drinking cider and CherryB and sporting my favourite ‘Tight Butts Drive Me Nuts’ T-shirt. Thinking about this transformation, I am rather shocked myself.

It Is A Wise Father That Knows His Own Child

2007-03-27T19:34:00.000+01:00

H and I have just been to our daughter’s school parents’ evening. Bizarrely, they serve drinks at this event, although I’m not sure why. Looks like a lethal combination to me – all those pushy parents, straining to contain their vicarious ambitions.
As always, I was one of the few parents drinking. It could be because the white wasn’t chilled very well, and the red has a tendency to turn newly-bleached teeth blue.
By the time we got to speak to our daughter’s long-suffering teacher, I had already downed two of the luke warm whites. Maybe I’m a bit of a pushover at these events, but since she didn’t raise any problems about our daughter’s progress, I was happy to thank her after our allotted ten minutes, and get up and go home (to a decent chilled white). I have always worked on the principle that if there’s any trouble to do with your kids, it will surely come and find you – you really don’t need to go looking for it.
Before we left the school hall, I was tempted to take a glass of wine up to the poor teacher who was now being grilled by a particularly alpha Dad, as his decorative wife looked on adoringly. Maybe a few swigs would have given the teacher the courage to suggest to him that his darling daughter had not inherited his mathematical ability. She could then have offered him the consolation that at least she hadn’t inherited his looks either.

They Think Its All Over

2007-03-26T19:27:00.000+01:00

Went to watch my son play football for his school this afternoon. He had a few weeks of glory in the D team, before the pressure of such dizzy heights got to him, and he was relegated to the E’s. I must say, he seems to have dealt with it better than some of the mothers whose sons have made a similar slide from the A’s to the B’s.
There is something very heartwarming about watching small boys play football. They are completely untroubled by concepts such as tactics, strategy, or indeed skill, preferring to all cluster around the ball like enthusiastic bees, hacking away indiscriminately. It took some of them half the match to realise which direction they were supposed to be running, so you can imagine the confusion after half time, when they swapped ends.
Its now several hours after the event, and I’m relaxing with a big, generous Wolf Blass Shiraz (Tesco £8.49).
I spent the match standing on the touchline with a cluster of spectator mums. Those in heels were trying to pretend that they weren’t really sinking backwards, and every now and again, one high pitched voice or another would warble a few words of encouragement.
The opposition goalie wore gloves that made him look like Mickey Mouse, and had the terrified expression of a rabbit caught in the headlights. When our boys managed, by pure fluke, to chip the ball past him and into the net, it was difficult to know whether to clap, or to run on and console him. We opted to clap, partly to restore our failing circulation.
Once there was a score on the board, the father of one of the visiting team started prowling up and down the touchline. After a while, he could contain his frustration no longer and started yelling at his son, issuing commands like ‘Tom! Mark your own man’ and ‘Move to the left, Tom!’ He gradually worked up to such a torrent of orders, that the poor child kept missing the ball completely, he was so anxious to follow his father’s instructions.
When I was at school, I happily played netball for eight years without my parents ever attending a match - I probably would have been mortified if they had ever turned up. These days we are called upon to witness our children’s every move - they can’t shake us off. I’m sure little Tom would have been absolutely fine today, if it hadn’t been for his father’s ‘support’.
Maybe if I’d had a testosterone-releasing Intrinsa patch, I could have run up and down the touchline too, either barking at my own son or propositioning the alpha Dad. Neither prospect is very appealing.

Brave New World

2007-03-26T10:44:00.000+01:00

Apparently a patch designed to boost women’s libido will be available on prescription from this week. Intrinsa (a sort of Viagra for women) releases testosterone into the bloodstream through the skin, and stimulates thoughts about sex. Hmmmmm. I read this news with raised eyebrow and hollow laugh. Doubtless, the drug companies are rubbing their hands (or other appendages) with glee. As someone teetering on the edge of the menopause, I need to be careful with my criticisms, but it does seem to me that this is somehow missing the point. Surely one’s ‘libido’ is an urge – an itch that needs to be scratched? There can’t be that many women who would want to add thoughts about sex to their daily mental ticker tape? Isn’t it rather crowded there already? Maybe its me who is missing the point – Intrinsa is really aimed at men, especially the sweaty-palmed type who need to bribe or drug women to sleep with them. Doubtless, they will soon be able to order it on line, along with their Viagra and Rohypnol. The days of Aldous Huxley’s ‘sex-hormone chewing gum’ are upon us.

Lush Off The Leash

2007-03-25T15:42:00.000+01:00

Last night we went to a wine dinner in a smart restaurant, where the food had been chosen to complement the Bordeaux wines (or was it supposed to be the other way round?). There is something rather liberating about this format, where someone else has chosen what you eat and drink (can’t see why my kids complain about it so much). All that is required of you is that you sit and savour whatever is served up/poured out for you. Six different wines (one excellent sauvignon blanc, four fine and varied reds and a sauternes that tasted like Haliborange tablets) ensured Drunk Mummy Heaven. There was a short presentation about the grapes, wine producers and vineyards which added a touch of respectability to the proceedings. For the most part, it was just an excuse to drink lots of delicious wines, out of delicate sparkly glasses with no greasy lip smears or dishwasher stains on them.
When we got home, our fresh faced young babysitter was still toiling away at her homework. When she sees me rolling in, grinning inanely, she probably thinks ‘Stay-at-home motherhood for me?’ then shudders and reaches for her textbooks.

Bipolar Disorder-ly

2007-03-23T19:09:00.000Z

Why, in all these rather bossy manuals/programmes about parenting, or child-rearing, do you never see the following advice to parents:
“Pour out a large slug of your favourite wine and don’t speak to anyone until you have sucked the final dregs from the glass.”
It works for me every time.
Like a converse version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, my potion of choice turns me from snarling, intolerant beast into rational, considerate human being. Here are a few examples:
Sober Mum bellows ‘What do you mean, you’ve lost your cardigan again?’
Drunk Mum reassures ‘It’ll turn up somewhere.’
Sober Mum yells ‘For God’s sake, can’t you eat a yogurt without wearing it?’
Drunk Mum soothes ‘Don’t worry, it’ll come out in the wash.’
Drunk Mum is also capable of ignoring nose picking, pocket billiards and endless noisy horseplay, preferring to smile indulgently and kiss the golden heads of her little cherubs. Sadly the kids are forced into the company of cantankerous Sober Mum for most of the time. They occasionally get to spend time with her much jollier counterpart (Sunday lunch, the odd Friday night in front of the telly) but in order to maintain some sense of propriety, it’s a rare treat.
Tonight’s tipple is La Marca prosecco (Ocado £5.99). I like to have a couple of glasses on a Friday night, a couple before dinner on Saturday night, and the last bits while making lunch on Sunday. Its light and peachy, and makes me feel festive. I can’t afford a ‘champagne lifestyle’ but the ‘prosecco lifestyle’ suits me just fine.

Acts Of Civil Disobedience

2007-03-22T23:16:00.000Z

Right, they’ve finally all gone to bed, and I’m sitting here with a glass of Tesco’s Finest Chablis. I bought an embarrassing amount when it was on offer at a fiver a bottle before Christmas. The only other items I had in my trolley were a low calorie sandwich and a clutch of children’s birthday cards. I must have looked like the dipsomaniac version of the mad old woman with a trolley full of tins of cat food. I’ll be cutting my own hair next.
Anyway, this wine is crisp, green, and not too oaky, and the condensation is forming nicely on the outside of the glass. I should have time for at least one fortifying glass before my lovely husband returns from the coal face, and I have to cook the dinner. Actually ‘cook’ is too elaborate a word for what I usually do. ‘Assemble ingredients on a plate’ would be a more honest description. I suppose serving up a bit of microwaved fish and a bag of lettuce keeps me off the radar of the healthy food police, but only just.
I’m not really hungry, since I have already wolfed the equivalent of a three course meal in instalments, while preparing the children’s dinner, coercing them into eating it, and clearing away the resultant mess. I’ve also done the packed lunches (when did I start nibbling crusts for fun?) so the prospect of a third round of food preparation doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.
I think a second glass of this Chablis will go down rather well. It will make me feel subversive enough to slip a couple of Jammie Dodgers into the lunchboxes. I know that some parents view them as polonium-210 for kids, but its convenient sometimes to be able to blame a child’s obnoxious behaviour on sugar or food colourings. At least it gets you off the hook as a parent.